Paranoia and Resolve
by bioldrawings
Summary: Zim finally completed his mission, and the human race are under Irken rule. But now Zim's hard-won status is at risk, and Dib may be his only hope. But his former nemesis may not be the most trustworthy ally. Is revenge worth throwing away your life?
1. Prologue

Disclaimer : Invader Zim comes from the brilliantly disturbed mind of Jhonen Vasquez. I don't own it in any way, shape or form.

Ok, my first BIG story! Well, it should be about eight chapters, not including this one. Big for me, ok? The next one is out tommorrow, then hopefully a new chapter every week. Enjoy, internet people.

**Paranoia and Resolve**

Prologue

"Well he wasn't supposed to actually **conquer **the place!"

Purple stuffed a few dozen more chips in his mouth and Red wished for a moment that he hadn't snapped at him. But when he was under this kind of stress, he got tetchy. When Purple was under stress, copious amounts of snacks disappeared with an alarming speed.

This was not how it was supposed to happen. Zim was supposed to be dead, or exiled, or amusingly inept but overall **very far away**. But in just two days the big spaceship ga- ugh **Armada **would be rendezvousing at the Earth planet with the carriers ready to harvest anything worth taking and the main cannon primed for the organic sweep. To be fired by the courageous invader who had conquered the planet.

Zim.

This was not how it was supposed to happen.

Why did they have to do it? Actually acknowledge Zim as an invader? Validate the short little beast, scourge to all life in the galaxy and his beloved Tallest in particular? Well he knew _why_, of course. Old, old rules and rights and morale which the military needed far more than the Tallest would ever let the media know. Zim's victory transmission (complete with an almost certainly exaggerated inventory of captured goods) coming during a very well attended rally didn't help. They couldn't keep this quiet. Too many had heard, too many uncomfortable questions would be asked, and there weren't enough airlocks.

Purple finished the bag and tore into the next one unceremoniously. Empty packets were piled around him like the Ghosts of Snacks Past. With the empty desperation of one covering his eyes before the oncoming train, Red made the obvious suggestion.

"We could Skooge him...?"

Purple looked up from the chips with a slightly unhinged glare.

"Yeah, 'cause that's worked _soo well_ before! Besides, can you see anyone, _anyone_, volunteering to be Zim?"

Red flinched. It was true. Short, irritating Irkens seemed to be nigh on indestructible. Considering the abuse they suffered at the hands of their taller compatriots, this was probably an evolutionary necessity. And what kind of degenerate Irken would spend the rest of their life under the name of the most abhorrent little monster his species had ever produced (and **not **in a good way)?

"We... we could just, just ignore him! Make some excuse, wait him out!"

"You think he'd **let **us?"

"He's gotta die of old age sometime!"

"He could wipe us all out before that happens!"

"Well you make a suggestion then! What kind of Tallest are you?!"

"**Me?! ** This is all** your **fault! You had the idea of sending him to that stupid stupid rock! I just wanted to leave him with the sandwich!"

Purple was shaking now, could have been rage, but was probably fear. Another bag of chips suddenly found itself being brutally eviscerated.

"**You** said we'd never see him again! **You **said he was gonna die out in space, far far away! _**You said **_that this would never ever happen! You **promised!" **

Red grabbed Purples arms before he could chew off a finger with his aggressive stress-eating. "Well ok, maybe we screwed that one up, but hey we're still great, right? We'll get through this, we'll think of something! We've got through worse- remember Operation Impending Doom One?"

Purple shook his head, "this is worse".

Red was determined not to let this become a crisis. Well, ok, it already was the crisis to end all.. um.. crisisises (?) but he was determined not to **admit** it.

"Do you..."

Purple sounded almost calm for the first time since Zim's transmission. Red looked at him encouragingly.

"Do you think... if we gave him what he wanted... maybe he'd leave us alone...?"

The optimism was hesitant at best, but Red wanted desperately to rekindle some of that old "we're the Tallest and we're _totally_ _awesome_" feeling that had fled in terror from Zim's triumphant smirk.

"Uh.. yeah! I mean, maybe..."

Hey, was that the glimmer of a totally awesome idea?

"Wait- yeah- no wait.. yeah!" Red grabbed the chips from Purple's limp hands and devoured a handful. "He conquered the stupid planet, right? So, like, he's probably _deserving_" (ugh, that word did **not** want to be associated with Zim) "of some kind of promotion, right?"

Purple gave him a look with emergency medical treatment in it, "promotion? You want him around _us?_"

"Nu-uh no, not that. A _special_ promotion. For _really special _Irkens! Something absolutely _vital _and necessary and, and..."

"Not involving us at any point?" Purple was unslouching a little. The crumbs around his mouth shifted to make room for the grin of a Tallest who is Catching On to the Totally Awesome Plan.

"Exactly! He can't complain can he? We can put him somewhere in the administration ships, tell him he's in charge of his little planet, bury him in all the jobs nobody else would be stupid enough to take seriously, and leave him there to rot! Forever!"

Purple hesitated "the administration ships? Isn't that a little... close?"

But Red was on a roll. And who could say? Maybe that oncoming train would be made out of foam. That would be nice.

"No, that's were we went wrong before! When he's far away we can't see what he's doing! It's all about balance! Far away enough so's he can't bother us, close enough that one wrong move and"- Red mimed centring something in the sites of an imaginary canon - "BANG!"

Purple still looked a less than sure. Would Zim be content to be bombarded with paperwork under the guise of a real 'mission'? Zim was stupid, but not patient. For that matter, Purple was not one hundred per cent sure that Zim could be destroyed by anything as lacklustre as a volley of canon fire followed by ship wide explosions and lethal decompression. But oh, how he wanted to believe. He managed a weak grin.

"Yeah, ok. I guess, I mean, how could things get any worse?"

"_Don't ever ever say that!"_


	2. Admin 23

Chapter 1 – Admin 23

_Six months later._

_Not, like, exactly six months, I mean, that would be weird, when you think about it. Seriously. I guess it's like, I don't know, one hundred and ninety-two days or something. _

_Wait, do months count in space? This whole thing is stupid. Lazy writing._

_Whatever._

It was said on the ship Admin23 that the sound of Zim marching up a hall way could clear out an entire deck faster than a new snack shipment. After the first few days of wandering around, seeing not a soul, Zim had assumed that the workers on this ship were incredibly lazy, probably not worthy of even being part of the Great Irken Empire, let alone to serve on a ship with it's most valued invader, and resolved to recommend to the Tallest that they be flushed into space in his very next report.

Which was a problem, because he didn't seem able to make any reports.

Oh, he recorded messages and the computer always stated with mechanical certainty that they had been delivered, but they were never answered. When he tried a live transmission, he was blocked every time, except for his first attempt. A confused technician's face had appeared for all of four seconds, accompanied by the words: "-do you think your doing?! Cut it! Cut-". Before the screen went blank.

At first, he had suspected the computer. He had run every test, and eventually taken the machine apart and put it back together again (making a few improvements to the design here and there, honestly, who ever built the thing obviously knew **nothing** about engineering), but still he was unable to reach the Massive. His incoming messages marker stubbornly refused to light up and make beepy noises, nothing changed except that now his computer occasionally answered him in Vortian street slang, for some stupid reason.

He had tried to cut out the middle man and fly out to the flagship itself. But his cruiser had apparently been impounded. In a blast furnace. The ground control drone cowering behind his desk agreed to get another delivered right away, but transferred to a waste recycling ship the next day, and was apparently too dull-witted to have logged the request before leaving.

But Zim was no fool. His transmissions, his ship, these were not mere coincidences. Someone did not _want_ him to give his vital mission reports. Clearly he was being sabotaged. Some crawling little creature, jealous of his success, the adoration he had so rightly earned, was trying to cut him off from his Tallest.

Somewhere out there, someone was laughing at him. Well, they should enjoy it while they still had the functioning organs necessary for laughter! Which would not be much longer!

Despite the white-hot rage that had been scorching his innards for months now, Zim smiled his best megalomaniac smile. Yeees, horrible, unspeakably violent revenge would soon be his.

He stopped at a door near the end of the corridor. The sign proclaimed the room beyond the den of: Invader Zim, Human Resources. The "invader" part had been scratched crudely into the metal. Zim had wondered why it had been left out, but quickly put it down to the crippling incompetence of all those on the ship unfortunate enough to not be Zim.

The door took slightly too long to open. Thin tendrils of something indiscernible and sticky clung to the wall before snapping.

Zim eyed the mess with distaste.

"GIR! What have you been doing?"

The little robot extracted a gooey hand from it's mouth and stood to rigid attention. The affect was completely ruined by the dim-witted grin spread across it's face along with the unidentified sticky substance.

"HEY master! I wuz just havin' a party with all the little weenies and the control chair and that moose that lives in the wall.** I brought peanut butter**! What'cho get?"

Zim lifted a boot and watched the sticky stuff slowly fall to the ground, "_this _is peanut butter? It's kinda... gloopy."

"It's reeaally old!"

"Oh." Zim edged his way over to the main terminal at the back of the room, trying to avoid the decomposed peanut butter, which was difficult because it appeared to be oozing on every surface.

He tapped a button to log on and found his hand stuck fast to the console. He tugged at it, and it agreed to relinquish his hand provided that it could keep the glove.

"Eew! GIR! I ordered you to stop bringing Earth food onto the ship after those brownies ate that janitor! The Tallest must think I'm such a slob! No wonder they never answer when the office is so filthy..."

"Office". He did not like the word. Of course, this was a very special, important job and an honour and he was doing the Empire proud (the Tallest had repeated those words a lot when the gave him the assignment, just so no one forgot how favoured Zim was), but he could not shake off that feeling in his veins... his blood screamed at him; _where is the conquest? The dealing of death and destruction to the inferior? The careful plotting and scheming, hiding in plain sight? The giant robots? _

_An _office _is no place for an invader..._

Zim had been staring blankly at his ensnared glove for several minutes before he forced himself back to his current mission.

He had an enemy, some treacherous Nemesis to be caught and punished. First, he had to find exactly where they had hidden whatever they were using to inhibit his computers...

Zim extended a PAK leg and poked at the clingy buttons, and the screen lit up to show an irate face. Female, mini holo-monitor over one of her green eyes.

"Head of Counter-Intelligence Second Captain Venn, what do you-" a blink followed by a hiss.

"Zim."

The loathing in her voice was completely lost on Zim, "Ah, Second Captain. I require your services with regards to some _despicable saboteur_ who has infiltrated the ship, and has been blocking my messages to the Tallest from the very day that I arrived. I need you to send a team to investigate my offi- base of operations and uncover their sneaky spying machines."

Venn's eyes narrowed. "With all due _respect_, are you sure that some malevolent element is involved? There isn't perhaps a less... far-fetched reason why they won't- why you can't contact the Massive?"

"Huh?" Zim raised a antenna, "what other kind of reason could there be? The problem is not with my equipment, I checked that already. Do you think that... the Communications array has been hijacked by Rat People?!"

"What? No! I mean that-"

"The fleet has been cast into a dimensional vortex which blocks all transmissions?!"

"I said _less _far-fetched-"

"None of this is real! It's all an illusion created by robots from the future! We're all stuck in these pods and-"

"Shut up! I'll be there **personally **as soon as I can get my-"

"-on't take the blue pill! They taste all nasty- wait what? Oh, ok then."

*

It wasn't that Zim never got **any **messages. He'd had quite a few short, pre-recorded ones in the past few weeks. But they weren't from his Tallest, and therefore were not important and consigned to deletion.

The messages were getting more and more frequent with each day. But Zim had more pressing concerns, so he ignored them.

If he had acted differently, perhaps the whole thing would have gone a lot smoother, with fewer horrible acts of violence. Or perhaps not. The universe can be weird like that.

*

Two minutes later Venn watched the dreaded portal judder open and stepped back as something viscous pooled out.

"GIR let go of that! You already ate the other one and it made you explode that one time and I'm **not** gonna clean you up ag- hey!"

"Invader" Zim stopped wrestling with the demented little robot (it kept screaming and writhing regardless) and squelched over to the door. One of his antennae was stuck to his head, his uniform was stained and he was missing a glove. He still puffed himself up as tall as he could (up to Venn's shoulder) and fixed her with a condescending leer.

"Well, get to work!"

One of Venn's eyes twitched. She leaned into the room as far as she could without actually setting foot inside, pulled a small device out of her PAK which beeped twice, "uh-huh, big surprise," replaced it and turned a slight grin onto Zim.

"All clear, no bugs."

"Huh?" Zim looked confused, "you didn't **do **anything."

"Scanned the room, nothing strange-" no, that wasn't the right word by any stretch of the imagination, "-nothing that could be responsible for your communications problem," except for the insane pest himself, of course.

"Huh! You call that an investigation? Pathetic! Take things apart! Look in the walls!" ("Aww, ma moose..." GIR sobbed) "Run background checks on everyone who could be jealous of my amazingness! Do it properly!" Zim clenched his hands into fists and practically screamed into her face.

Twitched again. Sick of these games now, she leaned in a little close, "I am doing it properly, _invader,_ there is just nothing to investigate. The transmissions are getting to the Massive just fine. If you can't get an answer, then I think that leaves just the one possibility, don't you?"

Smirking, Venn turned and marched back up the hallway. She had got all of six steps when Zim's voice caught her, quiet but insidious.

"You are incompetent. You know nothing of infiltration. I see I was foolish to rely on _you_ to find the source of the problem."

Venn felt her fingers digging at the skin under her gloves. She turned slowly. She could see why no-one else would work on this floor. It was they way he looked at you. You knew he wouldn't back down. If Zim said he could breathe in space, he'd believe it with the full force of an ego that almost made up for his stature, and he'd go on believing it until his eyes burst and his organs imploded, and possibly for a long time afterwards.

It was insufferable. Infuriating.

"Well, why don't you go "rely" on someone more _qualified_" she hissed through clenched teeth.

Zim blinked.

Venn decided to take the silence as some kind of victory. She turned, and walked. When she reached the Counter-Intelligence hall forty pairs of eyes glanced up, and kept glancing as she walked along the rows towards her personal chamber. Near the end one struck out with "so how was he?" and received the Glare of Death in return.

The incoming message marker on her console flashed. Falling gratefully into her chair, she opened the file.

She hissed again when she saw the name of the sender.

When she read the actual order, she smashed the screen into glinting shards.

Author's Notes: hehe, I like references. Well here's chapter one. It was tricky to write, even though I plan my stories out I still ad-lib most of the actual writing, but since most of my stuff is so short I never had to really worry about stuff like continuity before. I edit and re-touch it all thoroughly before it goes out, but if anything dumb pops up, tell me and I'll fix it up. Thanks to everyone reading, see you in a week!


	3. If

Chapter 2 – If

_Shhcshh._

One day he'd walked back to his house and it wasn't there. In fact, the whole street wasn't there. If you followed the debris and ash back to it's source (and he had, without a thought), then it led back to a hole in the ground. It was a deep hole. Who knew Zim's base had gone down so deep?

Zim was gone, he didn't see him again. He'd been absent from skool that day. The day before things had been normal. The week before there been an altercation over a crossword and the rings of Saturn, but nothing out of the ordinary.

If he'd known, if he'd seen it coming,

If he'd made them believe, if he'd captured some piece of undeniable proof,

If he'd been able to confront the alien after that first, decisive strike,

If he'd, he would've, he would've done,

Something. Yeah, something.

But he didn't and he hadn't and that was, well in the past. So he didn't think about it much

_All the time. If he'd just_

because it didn't help and it was in the past anyway.

_Sssshhc. Shhc._

Thing about Irkens, they never got rid of something if it might be useful. Scientists needed something to dissect, soldiers needed target practice, really short Irkens needed someone to push around.

Professor Membrane was useful. It seemed that his incredible popularity was contagious across the species as well, because Dib couldn't see any other reason why he himself hadn't been left to burn with the Earth (now a call centre planet apparently, though the moon was used to stockpile old earth-style food, for reasons nobody was clear on). He was also pretty sure that was why he hadn't been thrown out an airlock by now. Dib did not seem to be useful.

_Sshhhhhhh._

In the last few months he'd been a cleaning drone, a fuel scrubber, a runner for some sort of daytime talk show and now this. This was the worst by far, even worse than that time when he'd found out that the fuel he was supposed to refine produced an allergic reaction that made a third leg sprout from his neck. This was just wrong.

_Ssshca-splat!_

The second grease-drowned glove came loose and Dib almost fell back. It was stuck to his work boot now, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. He'd spent most of his brief break wrestling with his stained uniform, and who knew when the Frylord would give him another.

Dib splotched over to the screen bolted into the wall. He typed in the address for Lab Planet Gamma. Dumb name. But at least it wasn't HelloHowCanIHelpYouia.

_Shouldn't be like this._

Professor Membrane appeared on the screen. Or at least his back and a gloved hand holding out a purple container that was giving off a greenish glow. Typical science fictiony stuff.

"Dad, it's me. Your, uh, son. Dib".

"Hmm? Oh.. aah! How's the research, son?", Membrane faced the camera, the glowy thing was placed in his pocket. Dib smiled nervously.

_Pathetic._

"It's uh, it's going great! I'm really doing well with all the, uh science... work... stuff... I'm doing."

Membrane nodded. "I'm so proud of you, son."

_No_

Dib stared at his feet. The one time his dad could actually say those words, and it didn't mean anything. He almost wished Membrane would just **look** at the transmission's source. Foodcourtia was not known for its great centres of scientific repute.

He'd finally been proved right, and now he had to spin together lies just so his dad didn't go on thinking he was a loser. It was ironic. Or maybe poetic justice? Whatever, it wasn't fair.

"So, how's Gaz?"

"Tell Dib I hope he explodes!"

"Oh, she's adapting just fine."

Dib nodded. Gaz was unfazable. End of the world and mankind reduced to slavery? Pff, who cares? One set of crayons accidentally melted while he experimented with his telescope? Five years setting fire to his birthday presents. Of course Gaz was fine.

_Gotta keep talking._

"So, what kind of work are you doing over there?"

"Well I probably shouldn't be talking classified information with you, but as we are partners in science," he sounded like he might be smiling, and Dib felt like crap, "We're all very exited about the new megadoomer series, the testing is disappointing but with a few modifications fatalities should be far fewer-"

Dib had been content. His dad had moved over and he'd been able to see Gaz at the back of the room, indulging her inner piggy hunter. Membrane had been talking about work, Gaz was gaming and Dib was feeling left out and depressed. It had been almost like before, but now for some reason

_He's helping them make **weapons**_

he felt cold and sick. As Membrane babbled he tried to recapture that feeling of nostalgia and of being, well, home, but it wouldn't come. From the kitchens he could hear an argument of some sort. It was a little weird, hearing the Frylord growling at someone else.

"HUMAN! Get in here!"

Ah, that was more like it.

Membrane looked at him with a puzzled expression. Dib forced a 'those wacky guys' kind of laugh.

"Ha, hey dad, I'll call you again ok? When I have less work."

Membrane nodded. "Of course son, I understand. Science is demanding mistress."

"Yeah... bye dad."

"You suck Dib!"

_I know._

"Bye Gaz."

The screen flicked to black and Dib sighed. He pulled on his gloves and made his way towards the kitchen.

The Frylord was pissed. Dib was getting pretty good with Irken facial expressions, and he saw this particular one a lot.

Angry snarl 38: I've just had some bad news and someone is gonna pay for it. Guess what? It's you.

"Who have you been contacting?"

What was this? "Just my family, on Lab Planet Gamma."

"Who else?"

"I told you. _Just_ them."

Sneer 13: yeah right.

"Then explain _this_."

Dib was unceremoniously hauled up by his head and dangled into the eating area. A few patrons of various species glanced up, but quickly lost interest. Human slave getting pushed around? And no-one was losing any limbs? What else is new? And where are my fries? Human'd better get a move on with that, ya know, soon as he finishes picking his teeth out of the garbage.

Dib wasn't sure what he was supposed to be explaining. The place was a dump but no more so then any other fast food place on this or any other world.

Wait.

That was kinda weird.

"D'you mean those two?" Dib pointed, and the Frylord nodded.

Two taller than average Irkens wearing colours and insignia Dib vaguely recognised, though he wasn't sure where from. They were standing at a table near the counter, picking at something greenish-yellow. Dib could feel his arteries clogging from just being in the same room with it.

The two gave off an air of standing to attention even when dissecting junk food. One glanced at Dib and muttered to the other, who turned to scrutinise him for a few seconds. They stopped playing with their food and stood a little more professionally, but did not approach.

_What do they want?_

… _my neck hurts._

The Frylord turned Dib around to face him. He did not look happy with current developments. Maybe they were health inspetors? But no, the Frylord hadn't armed himself.

"**What did you do** ?"

"Nothing! I've got nothing to do with this!"

"They asked for you, Human Slave-"

_Go to hell, Alien Scum._

"by name, and you say you have nothing to do with this?"

"For me... what? I don't, I haven't done, Why would they do that?"

The Irken grinned suddenly and Dib felt horrible uncertainty and helplessness he'd become accustomed to welling up in his belly.

_Hate it hate it hate it_

"Well I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun finding out when they take you to the Armada."

"The..."

He knew this was bad. The Frylord was happy, so someone had to be getting screwed somewhere, and that someone was almost certainly Dib. What did they do to you on the Armada?

He didn't say anything as he was dropped and pushed out the door with the two important-looking Irkens.

He couldn't even recall any rumours or stories about how other species were treated out there. He heard the Frylord bellow something about being short-staffed now, and one of his escorts replied that they would have someone unimportant sent over.

So this was... permanent?

_Permanent like a new job or the dead kind of permanent?_

Why him? Why now? Even Dad didn't even work directly with the Armada. Who-

_Him_

A report on the Conventia broadcast, way back when this all felt like a bad dream he just hadn't woken from yet.

He'd seen his face. He remembered the feelings screaming through him with a viscous intensity. He still couldn't put a name to those feelings exactly, but they made him throw up on his shoes, which had lost him that cleaning job pretty quickly. He remembered that the Irken leaders looked, even to his, hah, alien eyes, like men who can see the tonsils of the jaws of death. They'd stuttered a lot.

It had to be. It had to be. He didn't know anyone else who

_This is it. This is it. My second chance. I can make it right. This is **it**._

would conceivably want to call a grease monkey up to the Armada with no kind of warning. It was ridiculous, stupid and probably going to get him injured or humiliated in some way. Typical Zim.

Maybe he's finally remembered that we're enemies. Maybe he just wants me up there to have someone to gloat at. **That** would be very Zim.

Maybe he just wanted to toss him out into space and watch his head explode.

It's not like he had much choice either way. Aside from provoking the guards into killing him,

_So my choice is basically: how do I want to die?_

so he'd just have to suck it up and hope that Zim wouldn't be in a murderous or evil-laugh-bow-before me-pitiful-human mood.

_He doesn't **have** any other moods! I don't have to keep just accepting this_

He didn't really want to die just yet. He'd have to hope that he could get through this thing quickly and painlessly and then get back to

_toadying and cowering from these arrogant genociders.. genomaking.. planet blowy-upping.. stupid evil alien guys that killed my planet_

surviving, and holding on to what little he had left.

_I should be fighting them _

for the sake of a burnt out, captured and mutilated planet?

_I can't give up, not now, I've finally got my chance for revenge _

for all the stupid, blind idiots who never believed me?

_I have to fight them, I'm_

because screwing it up the first time wasn't humiliating enough?

A long time ago, he'd watched Earth burn. Since then, he'd seen things more amazing than he'd ever thought possible. Pretty much all of it had sucked.

He wanted to survive. He wanted his family to survive, despite all its flaws. He did not want to die out here in this universe where an entire solar system could be bulldozed aside because a few million green guys with more id than brain cells between them wanted more space to kill robots and aliens and if nothing else was available, each other. He just wanted to survive.

_For how long? Until I get to old to work and get recycled or eaten or whatever the hell it is they actually do to pensioners or until they decide to hand Earth over? Here you go, have your world back, try not to lose it again because its only defender is an ineffectual loser not even in his teens yet who everyone thinks is crazy, bye and don't be a stranger now!_

There was nothing he could do. His impassive escort herded him through the streets and he tried not to think of lambs and slaughter.

_I can't give up._

_*_

When Dib's replacement turned up, he inherited three off-coloured gloves, a pile of old napkins which turned out to be sleeping arrangements, and one rather xenophobic boss.

There was also the issue of the inbox, which in the space of two and a half days had acquired over seventy-four messages, all from the same person. The later ones sounded rather desperate.

At the end, Dib wondered if knowing beforehand would have helped him. Maybe he could at least have made his choice in a space longer than a few desperate milliseconds.

But the messages were deleted, and by the time Dib got around to meeting the sender he was in a very desperate situation indeed.

He'd just spoken to Zim, and then something horrible happened.

Author's Notes – It was hard to write Dib, which kinda sucked 'cause he's co-main character here. I got massive help on how to get into a characer's head (and a lovely ego boost, hehehe) from a fellow amature fanfic author, so obviously:

**This chapter dedicated to InsideYourDreams24, thanks for the help, you are all kinds of awesome.**


	4. Confrontation

Chapter 3 – Confrontation

"GIR stop! Stop! I order you to **stop**!"

Zim yanked down on his antenna and ducked as GIR ricocheted by his head. The robot had been jetting around the room for two days now, and Zim was beginning to become irritated.

GIR screamed, in fear or mirth, it was hard to tell the difference, and dive-bombed desk, sending empty cans of poop cola spinning.

"Weeeehooooo I catch you monkey! I catch you good! I'm dancin' in the hospital!"

"GIR!" Zim crawled over and picked up the cans, and began frantically stacking them in the corner. "Stop this messy-making behaviour! They could be watching right now, I have to show them I'm in control, they should see that they are dealing with the Irken elite-GIR put that down!"

Zim extended his PAK-legs and leapt to wrestle the chocolate bar from GIR's hands, where it was being used to draw a pretty smiley face on the wall. GIR screamed and fled. Zim scrubbed at the smeared insignia.

This is Zim's office, six days after he decided to take the initiative against his scheming Nemesis. It has changed. It is emptier, for one. Every piece of electronic equipment has been stripped out, with the exceptions of the main control terminal and, depending on your definition of 'electronic' and 'equipment', GIR. It's cleaner, too. Every surface gleams. Sometimes the gleam reflects off Zim's eyes in a frightening way.

Zim, steps back to glare at the wall and _dare_ it to not be pristine. He has not left his office much, they could infiltrate it in his absence and do stuff, and even Zim has long ago had to acknowledge that his advanced robot henchman lacks the attention span for guard duty. He has not eaten much, but his body is in adequate upkeep. His mind, however, is showing distinct signs of fraying around the edges.

GIR is still himself as much as he ever was. He ran out of rocket fuel mid-somersault and clattered to a halt in front of the door as it slid open. It shut quickly behind the visitor. The look on her face had the inconceivable effect of sobering GIR from his anarchic thoughts.

Zim spun at the sound of the door and turned his glare onto Venn.

"I didn't authorise your entry."

"I _work_ here. I'm always authorised."

Dib was just starting to get the subtleties of Irken facial expressions. Zim had never really bothered. In his defence, most never had to try; instinct and programming should have provided everything an Irken should need to know. Put a random Irken drone in front of Venn now, and they would flinch and cower away, trying to make themselves look as short and non-threatening as possible. If looks could kill, Venn would have had her eyes tightly shut as she entered the shiny, bare room. Death was too _quick_.

Zim gestured off-handedly "I assume you're here because you want to apologise."

Twitch. "I'm here to ask you once more to reconsider. This is dangerous. It sets a terrible precedent. It goes against every principal of the Empire. It's _un-Irken_." She kept her voice steady, but it dripped with blood she ached to spill.

Zim hissed, 'un-Irken'?! ME! I am attempting to save the Empire from a most dire and horrible threat! Of course," his hands curled into fists, "these _are_ desperate measures that I am **forced** take now, but only because present resources are useless! In the end it will all be worth it. Un-Irken, ha! I **am** Irken! I AM ZIM!"

Venn's own hands clenched and un-clenched erratically. He brain and most of her internal organs wanted to be violently sick. She started to speak, stopped, began again and stopped. She shuddered, and grudgingly decided to take a different approach. Abomination or not, he was still her _superior_. That thought burned black-red in her mind. It made her want to break things.

"Surely, _surely_ you don't need it to work in my department though, do you? Anything could happen; they're such _fragile_ creatures. Why not keep it here, have it work under your supervision? I'll even send you some equipment for it." The neasea had passed, leaving sickly trails. She could not force herself to smile, but she kept her face steady.

"No!," Zim glanced about the room, eyes darting "I can't risk infiltration... the machines, they have eyes..."

… that seemed to be it.

"Oookayy." Venn hadn't given up. Her very existence was under threat. He wasn't a real soldier. He was barely even Irken, whatever delusions to the contrary he held. He was forcing her to taint herself, working with conquered scum as if they were worth something, as if they were equal. **He was shorter than her.** She dug her claws deeper into the fabric covering her palms. The brain-damaged robot was trying to pull out its optics, with some limited success.

She hadn't given up. But she wasn't going to win this one. It was time to step back, to regroup, to re-evaluate.

Zim was still muttering to himself. She sighed, "I'll send it in."

She locked her eyes on the human as she left and pointed it to the door.. She didn't really want to touch it. As she raised her arms to adjust her holo monitor, twin streams of blood seeped out from under her gloves.

The door opened.

The door closed.

For the first time since the destruction of Earth her invader and defender stood face to face.

Zim's thoughts went through three stages when he saw Dib. The first stage was that someone had made a mistake, this was the wrong human.

Clean, but in a disinfected rather than hygienic kind of way. The clothes were all wrong. Trenchcoat and t-shirt gone, non-descript slave garments instead, marked in several places with the numbers

4-667. Hair was too short. Glasses were plastic and too thick. He didn't linger on the facial expression, but it probably wouldn't have made much difference if he had. Zim was hardly very proficient in his **own** species' subtle physical hints and cues, although Dib's expression at this point could hardly be called 'subtle'.

Those thoughts passed as quickly as they'd arrived. It **was** the Dib, he was sure. His invader blood began to march to a familiar beat, here was his old Nemesis; from back before offices and treachery. His foe, his enemy; the anti-Zim. For a few seconds nothing had changed, the old gleeful evil smile spread across his face. His blood sang; here is the opponent, here is the battle-ground, here is the invader, here is the confrontation. He was ready to launch into his speech, Dib would tremble in fear when he heard his evil, evil plans.

And then stage three reared its ugly head.

His evil plan was that he had a problem, a big problem, and he'd called the Dib-human here

to

help

him.

It was a horrible thought that hadn't once occurred in all the time since he'd first had the idea. It dislodged the grin and sent it tumbling into the abyss. His blood went quiet and stood aimlessly, staring at its feet.

GIR had managed to yank one eye loose, and was holding it into the socket backwards. Whatever was in GIR's head was apparently hilarious.

"So," he stared into Dib's face. It had settled into a blank hundred yard stare. "You're probably wondering why I had you brought here," the wheels of his mind span wildly, but the hamster had long since fallen out.

Dib blinked and focussed on Zim. An expression flickered by too fast to be easily identified. "Wondering? Yeah, I guess you could say that, Zim."

Think, invader, think. "Hehehe, well it seems I have a small prob- a minor inconvenience has occurred. Is still occurring, in fact. I appear to be under attack from some sneaky enemy, blocking communication between myself and my superiors. Unfortunately I have been... unable to flush them out." He snarled as the shameful words crawled out. Desperate measures indeed.

Dib blinked through the thick lenses. "You can't think... I'm not, Zim, I'm not spying on you or messing up your machines or whatever it is you think I've done! I don't have any reason to, in case you haven't noticed, I don't have much to gain from capturing you any more, you already took my planet, I think what's left of the human race knows aliens exist by now!" He was shouting in a rather high-pitched bark, and his face had started turning that red colour humans made sometimes, probably for camouflage.

Zim was taken aback. Why was he so upset anyway? He was- Oh, of course. Heh, humans were so dumb. He chuckled, "oh Dib-human, poor stupid, stupid, stupid Dib-human. Of course I don't suspect you! I already defeated you, and besides, your tiny brain could not possibly do anything to interfere with a ship of the great Irken Armada. I merely thought that perhaps you, as a sneaky spying cheating inferior being, could provide some understanding of how their horrible minds work, thus providing me with the information required to track them down and tear off their limbs."

Dib had faded to a slight pink colour, but he was looking at Zim with narrow eyes and gritted teeth. "You... I'm... I see. I see, Zim. That's what you meant. I see. Of course. You defeated me already. How stupid of me to have forgotten."

"Yes, yes how very stupid." This was going well. Dib was far less trouble than he'd been before being conquered. Gripped by the euphoria that comes from seeing first hand the evidence of one's job well done, he decided to reach out, "I see that being part of our great empire has taught you well, Dib. I can see that you finally understand the Irken superiority to all other life-forms." Zim smiled fondly to himself in the glow of the majesty and might that he was such a vital component of.

Dib smiled. It hurt to look at. "Yep, alien superiority... yep."

Zim grinned back. This was going _really_ well. Those resistance groups and equal rights campaigners were morons! The other species _wanted _to be conquered; they just had to be enslaved a bit before they could realise it! "Indeed. I admit that I'm a little jealous, Dib. You get to experience the grandeur of the Empire as a complete outsider. You can truly appreciate its incredible power, something which to myself is purely mundane."

"Gugh," and the tiny, tortured sound of teeth under pressure.

"Yes, yes, words fail you in the presence of your saviour, I know. But you know Dib, you were a worthy adversary. Of course, you never had a chance in the face of an elite Irken invader, such as myself, but for a few seconds there, you were almost a very small thorn in my incredible side." Zim could tell Dib appreciated the compliment; he'd started breathing very hard.

"And now, the greatest honour a pitiful human such as yourself could ever hope for; to assist the great ZIM. I know this must be a proud moment. There's no need to thank me, please just try not to get any human eye-water on my things." He guided Dib back to the door and into shoved him out into the corridor.

As the door slid shut, Dib turned and blinked at him.

"You-"

The door closed.

"Wow, master, you made crazy Dib all crazy-er. Ah think he's gonna try ta destroy yoo. Where did ma eye go? I just put it back in ma head..."

Zim sighed and wondered why he had been so generous. Letting the human work on the Armada was one thing, but those kind words Zim had bestowed upon him. Of course Dib could be, well not an ally of course, but a useful tool. Still, that was no excuse for _niceness_.

He needed to be back in the fight. He was losing his sharp edges.

That was definitely it. He wasn't lonely. He wasn't _bored_.

He stared into the void of space through his one small window, and didn't hear the door alarm that was announcing his second visitor.

Author's Notes: I liked writing Zim here. I read a lot of 'Zim conquers Earth then meets up with Dib' fanfics, so I wanted to try something slightly different. Going from there, the idea of Zim being so typically insensitive and Dib being so mad but not able to strike back appealed to me. Thus: this chapter.


	5. Hate

Chapter 4 – Hate

"You-" the door snapped shut on his words, whatever they had been. He blinked again, feeling the hollow, raw space where the anger had been ache.

"Oh, are we all finished?"

The female Irken was scowling and squeezing out her gloves when he left the room. She looked up at him as if he'd made an inappropriate comment about child murder, and gestured down the hall.

"This way, 4-667."

She'd been extruding rays of bitchiness at him since she'd first pried open the lid of the crate he'd arrived in. He didn't know exactly what it was he'd done to make her so pissed, but he was used to every Irken he met treating him like scum from the moment they became aware of his existence. They all seemed to treat him like, well, like Gaz always did, but without the years of unwanted familial contact it had taken to cultivate that particular relationship. Wherever he went, the Irken reception was the same; disdainful tolerance.

Except, evidently, with Zim. Zim. Zim. Zim. Zim.

In the private, electro-discipline free world of his mind, Dib acted out every single 'dissection' doodle he'd ever drawn during a slow class, then added a few more cosy crimson scenarios when he ran out.

He walked on autopilot, careful not to overtake the Irken or accidentally knock into her or any of the many other things that would give an excuse for him to become a target.

He'd smelt the smoke, he'd seen the devastation. He'd ran to Zim's house because there was nowhere else to go; in his mind, a white-hot trail burned to that one point in time and space. He'd messed up, he'd been lax, but he'd confront Zim and they'd fight and he'd take back his planet or he'd die trying, and on that day he honestly didn't care which. But Zim'd already gone.

_**I already defeated you**_

He'd cowered in the emergency hostel, with the water cut and barely any food, the looted TV showing image after image of broken cities and scorched land before they degenerated into old emergency broadcast stills compelling all to duck and cover. Before the signal finally cut out, a new still, drawn in crayon on an old piece of cardboard, appeared. One word: repent.

_**How very stupid**_

By the time the harvesters came no one was in any condition to fight. Dib and his family were taken onto a transport with thirteen others. Then they left. There were more than three hundred in that concert hall cum Armageddon shelter; thirteen of them got to live. He thought that some of the ones left behind might have been classmates. When he tried to recall the faces, they blurred hopelessly.

_**I'm a little jealous, Dib**_

Sometimes he felt almost good about it. They never listened to him. He told them time and time again, and they never _listened_. Sometimes he thought how they deserved it, he imagined he'd smiled when he watched the planet branded with the Irken logo. When he tried to centre on those feelings, they skittered away like filthy bugs frightened by the light, but they never completely left. They were the ones that made him lose his stomach contents when he saw Zim smiling in triumph on that Conventia broadcast, back when he was someone else entirely.

_**There's no need to thank me**_

He was _sincere. _He was genuinely pleased for Dib, as much as Zim probably could be, he honestly thought that Dib would be _thankful_ would be _honoured_...

Dib wanted to crush him. Find out what he breathed through and squeeze it until he just stopped. Being smug. Being victorious. Being stupid. Being a living reminder that Dib had failed so catastrophically.

The corridors were virtually identical to the untrained eye. But Dib had been on a few Irken vessels now; he could find his way back if he wanted to.

_I could sneak back here later and stab him or something._

Can't. As much as he wanted to do something unspeakable to Zim, the human survival instinct was precious. God knows he needed something human out here, to hold on to. Even if he was doing the universe a favour, no self-respecting Irken would let him survive murdering another member of the species. Especially if there was any chance that they could take the credit. What good could he do the human race as a corpse?

_What human race?_

He wasn't scared of Zim, he was scared of death. The difference between the two had become rather skewed since recent events, but it still existed.

One final door hissed open and Dib blinked. They hadn't walked as far as he'd expected. Before were cubicles with computer terminals and uncomfortable looking chairs. It would have been quite human if not for the over-abundance of the colours pink and purple, and of course all the green people. They all looked at him as he entered, and dismissed him with the 'go throw yourself out an airlock, I'm too busy' look he'd accepted as part of his life's wallpaper. All but one orange-eyed individual, who regarded him carefully.

The female Irken dragged him to a corner of the room. She pulled a switch and another cubicle unfolded from the floor and expanded with a metal sound. This cramped in all the neighbouring cubicles and oh lovely, the occupants were now actively regarding him with outright hostility in place of murderous indifference. All except orange-eyes, who continued staring as if trying to see the spaces between Dib's individual atoms.

After a minute of awkward passed, Dib cautiously slid into the chair. The neighbours immediately began muttering to one another, orange-eyes raised an antenna, and the female snapped up to glare at Dib with renewed loathing. Dib almost flinched and immediately went to curl in on himself in that way that seemed to placate most aggrieved Irkens. Usually they took a moment to revel in their suddenly-taller status, then blanked the submissive and went off to do something evil somewhere else.

Here it didn't seem to work. She curled a lip, actually snarled at him a little. She held his eyes for about twenty seconds too long, and just as Dib began to wonder if he should yank his hair down to lose another inch, she abruptly turned and walked off.

He'd never thought he'd wish to be back on foodcourtia.

He toyed with the computer in front of him. It was basically a run down of surveillance on the Armada (heavily censored) and a huge database that he would've happily traded a limb to own just a few months ago.

He was lost in the reverie of the 'random article' button when he suddenly became aware that his personal space was noticeably less personal.

Orange-eyes was standing politely in front of his desk. He gave a odd smile and waved as Dib looked up.

"Greetings, new co-worker. Allow me to welcome you to Admin 23. The very tetchy individual who brought you here was Venn, I assume she didn't observe the customary introduction?"

Dib shook his head slowly.

"Naturally. She's the Second Captain, which means she does all the work the First Captain won't bother with. He left on vacation three days into Operation Impending Doom 2, hasn't been back since."

"Huh. I guess that explains her attitude." _What's with this guy?_

"Oh no, she was like that before. Failed the minimum height requirement for First Captain by oooh, about six molecules. I am Mek," a smile like a scythe.

"Uh-huh," Dib glanced at Venn, then back at Mek, and did some fast calculations.

Well, that explained that. Mek was very close to Venn in height.

_They're all the same, at the core_

So he was an asset now. Get in with Zim's pet, get in with Zim, one back room handshake later and there was a new Second Captain stalking the aisles.

_They're all just out for themselves. _

The anger seeped back, and Dib was a little surprised to find himself actually reaching for it.

Mek was still smiling, "I hope we can get along, human 4-667," he frowned, then leaned back into his cubicle and typed something, "Dib, isn't it?" that grin again.

"Yeah." he wanted to reach forward and do something about that grin. He was beginning to see that it was just the old 'airlock' look with a timer attached. He didn't like the way hearing his own name used to address him had become a privilege.

"If there's ever anything I could help you with, do not hesitate to ask. I live to serve."

Dib smiled back. Mek wasn't even trying to hide the predatory look now. And for all that he had dissected the ruse, Dib knew the real reason why bile was burning his throat.

_There's nothing I can do. I'm a plaything to demons, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it except smile as I walk into their teeth. _

…

_Crap._

*

Venn kept her hands pressed to the table. She didn't trust them not to start shearing at her skin. Her thoughts were walking down dark, shadowy roads. Something was very wrong. Not enemy infiltration, of course, but something uncomfortable.

The human thing had walked with her all they way here without a word, obviously deep in whatever passed for thought among its weak-minded race.

What could a slave have to think about that was so... interesting? It had ignored her the whole time, no visible fear on its hideous face. It had spoken with Zim for a fair while too. What did Zim have to talk about with a human slave creature?

Zim had called it in because he said she was incompetent, inadequate. What sick thoughts could possibly be haunting that dense little skull that he'd choose an inferior species, so inferior that **Zim** could enslave them, over an Irken?. **Any** Irken. Let alone herself. It made no sense.

Zim was a flawed little being. It had taken months of being ignored and unappreciated and very very bored to drill such suspicious thoughts deep into his mind. Venn was in Counter-Intelligence, she was born thinking that way.

Right now, she was thinking about the human's file. She brought it up on her holo monitor, though she had it pretty well memorised by now. It was confusing.

The human had gone through assignments with alarming speed. Its brood-master was marked as some sort of genius inventor. Its nest-mate appeared to do no work at all, and came with a **warning: strangely threatening** label on its file, which made no sense at all, unless the humans were one of those species with far larger, stronger, more aggressive females that males. Medical data indicated this was not the case.

One of the assignments had been on foodcourtia. Hadn't Zim been exiled there? In Venn's head, gears clicked and whirred. Numbers added up. Not necessarily accurately.

Then Mek started talking to the human. With _that_ look. The one Venn saw all too often and understood all too well. And the numbers clicked with a booming finality. Something was going on here, there was no room for doubt in her Irken mind. She knew that her best chance would be to watch carefully, gather data, and strike at the right moment.

But her gloves were full of blood and her head was full of that stupid little self-important voice and she wanted to strike **now**.

Emotion and training tore at each other, and finally formed a compromise. She smiled and let her claws entwine. If nothing else, the look on the little inferior's face would be entertaining.

Besides, it was about time Mek learned not to screw around with her.

*

Dib noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to get it into the range of the oversized lenses.

That boss Irken, Venn. Hands clasped behind her back, a look of vague cheerfulness on her face. It was far more effective than a siren and flashing warning light. Dib hoped it wasn't directed at him.

_Huh. I should be way more afraid than I am. What happened to all that impotent fear?_

Mek must have seen something in his eyes, because he spun to face the thumbscrew kindness head on. Venn didn't have scythes in her smile. Hers spoke of bare hands and dark alleys.

"Working hard, Mek?"

That omnipresent grin faltered, but recovered quickly, "of course. Just making sure the new recruit understands the situation." He gave Dib what he probably thought was an encouraging look.

"Indeed. We deal in information, after all. We need to ensure all our workers are adequately supplied with it." The sirens screamed.

Mek was worried, Dib could see. He knew something was coming, he just couldn't see what it was yet. "Ye-es. That is the greatest part of our duty here, after all. To understand. To work quietly in the shadows to prevent the birth of chaos within our Empire, and to put an end that which has already begun."

Venn nodded. "So very true, Mek, so very... accurate." Then suddenly she leaned past Mek until she was inches from Dib's head. He could see numbers and symbols whirring on her holo screen, reflecting in her eyes. He was aware that she had extended he PAK legs, could just see them rising behind her. He wasn't sure he could move.

"What about you, _Dib_, how do you think this is going to end?"

The silver strands descended, and Mek managed to scream briefly before they-

… _to shreds._

Bits of, of stuff tangled in his hair, green blood on his glasses and dripping from that murderously pleasant smile.

_Oh, there's the fear again._

Author's Notes: ok, you might be wondering WTF that was all about. Well this chapter was the first I ever conceived for this fic, though it was a very different story back then. Basically, I love random violence, and tormenting my characters. Also, this chapter has a pair of illustrations on my dA gallery, in case anyone wants to see me suck in **glorious colour** as well as in word form.


	6. Questions

Chapter 5 – Questions

The door alarm echoed around Zim's thoughts without leaving any kind of difinitive impression. When it stopped it's absence left a hollow place that almost pulled him from his non-thoughts before the world went white.

The door exploded. GIR screamed. Zim spun and crouched into a fighting stance. His joints protested a little. Far too long out of action, it was a disgrace. The smoke faded away to reveal the impatient visitor.

"Look master, it's Tak!"

Zim snarled at the indigo-eyed Irken, "Who are you?!"

"It's Tak master! She tried to destroy you that one time!"

"Who are you?! Answer me!"

She sighed, "I really don't have time for all this **again** Zim, I'm only-"

"SPEAK! WHO ARE YOU WHO INTERUPTS ZIM?!"

"It's me! Tak!" a blank stare, she gestured and spoke quickly, prompting, "you ruined my life, I tried to take your mission, there were weenies and alliances and an epic space battle!"

Zim cocked his head to one side, "really? When?"

"On Earth!"

"You're sure?"

"Yes!"

"Oh," Zim looked down at the dust settling on his boots. "Are you sure you're in the right office?"

A resigned sigh, this was about as good as she had expected, "I'm sure, Zim."

"Okay..."

There was a moment. GIR played 'epic space battle' with a few pieces of ex-door, the two never-really-invaders-but-for-totally-different-reasons stood apart, dust and silence choking the air.

"So, anyway," Tak folded her arms, "where was I?"

"You were walking all menacing-y. I... don't think you'd really said anything yet."

"Oh right... well, it was I, Zim! I'm the one who's been tormenting your every waking moment, I'm the one who knows your dark secret!" Tak grinned and pointed, but the moment was gone.

"Hunh? What kind of insane space vapours have you been sucking? Zim has no secrets!"

"Ha! You can't fool me, Zim! The Tallest may believe your lies, but I know, and I can prove it! And I've come for you, just as I said I would-"

"When?"

"I- What?"

"When did you say you would "come for me"?" They both flinched at the possible implications of the phrasing.

"In my last six messages."

"Messages?"

"The one's I've been _tormenting_ you with since you got here."

Zim looked baffled as only he could. His face was an open book, it just didn't have any words in it.

"Telling you how I was going to expose you, how I'd hunt you down, make you wish you'd never been artificially created...? I sent a lot of them." Tak grasped weakly at the air, the conversation was not going at all as she'd planned, at it was making her unsure, and a little tetchy.

Zim started to shake his head, then a kind of realisation dawned, "Ohhh, **those** messages, yeah I deleted them, they weren't important."

"But, you did listen to them. Right?"

"Of course not. **They weren't important.**" Zim spoke slowly and carefully, as if explaining to a smeet which was the dangerous end of a laser cannon.

"But I sent dozens! Do you have any idea... I built tranmission masts out of antlers and aluminium foil, I bribed, I robbed, I had to sell an organ to get that thing forged... if you didn't listen to them, how could you know wether or not they were important?!"

"I guess I'm just that amazing," Zim smiled, then suddenly snapped back into an offensive crouch, "wait just one.. it was you! It was you all along! You've been sabotaging me and preventing me from contacting the Tallest!"

Tak laughed, a short snap that trailed into a nasal snigger, "oh no, Zim, I've done nothing... yet. You are perfectly capable of being your own worst enemy, as well as mine and everyone else's!"

Zim stepped forward, "of course, it all makes sense! Wracked with envy over my amazing skills, you were driven to this horrible thing of horribleness. GIR! Grab her!"

When no answering "yes my master!" was forthcoming, Zim turned to see GIR mostly held in the oversized claw of another SIR unit, while its other hand methodically pulled him to pieces ("I can't feel ma legs, yaay!")

Tak smirked, this was more like it, "I don't think you'll ever see it Zim, you're just too stupid. But you've stolen victory from my grasp for the final time. I'm not here to thwart your false mission or try to impose sense onto your delusions; I'm just here to kill you for what you did to me back on Earth."

Zim raised up on his PAK-legs, pointing a steady claw at her, "how pathetic you are to me that you still have not recovered from the defeat of your lava-pumpimg snack-planet plan (which was my idea first anyway). The Tallest will have you destroyed oh-so slowly for breaking my door, assaulting my robot minion and for killing me!" He thought a moment, "which you will not because I am ZIM and will not be defeated by a mere... you!"

Tak snapped, snarled and pushed herself into his face, rising on her own PAK-legs, "you... you fool! You can't be this stupid, you must at least know, you can not be insinuating that you were unaware of this last, greatest insult!"

"You're not making sense!" Zim shouted back, and was disappointed when she didn't flinch, but moved nearer, visibly shaking.

"You stole my victory! I conquered Earth!" Tak grabbed him by his uniform and shook him with every syllable.

"What? **I** conquered Earth, it says so on my door- I conquered Earth!"

"No-you-didn't!" Tak shrieked through clenched teeth, "I spent weeks building up to it. I had the human governments firmly in my grasp, the countries pitted against each other, unsure who they could trust, the public to slow and bored to respond to anything, pollution and filth rotting their minds, and then YOU take your base on one stupid destruction spree, they all panic like the beasts they are and start shooting and blowing up each other, and somehow, SOMEHOW, when the dust settles, YOU'RE the one on top of the pile, where it should have been ME!" She was gasping for breath and Zim was disoriented, but he quickly mounted a defence.

"Ha, if you had truly done as you say, you would have called the Armada and you would be the one honoured and revered by all instead of me!"

Tak chose to ignore the last part of that sentence as too dumb for contemplation, "while you were firing blindly at everything in sight, you managed to hit my ship. In the time it took me to make repairs, you'd already called the Armada and claimed responsibility for my success! Did you really think that you managed to compel the humans into a massive, planet destroying civil war by blowing up a few blocks of suburban housing estate?!"

Zim gave her that infuriating condescending look again, "Yes".

Tak released him and dropped to the floor.

"It's. Not. Right. I'm good, Zim. I'm good at this. You only succeeded, you only _survive_ by dumb luck. I had talent, I had skills. I should be the one with the mission, with the, the plaque on the door!" She reached forward, as if to strangle him, but her feet stayed fixed to the ground.

"This is all wrong Zim. This is wrong, and it keeps happening. I'm the invader, I'm the true conqueror of Earth, and you're just a flaw, a defect". She didn't seem to be speaking to him anymore.

Zim's face froze. Slowly he descended, his blood screaming defiance in his veins, and hissed low; "if I'm so defective, so _flawed_, then what does that make you? I took that planet, I took it and nothing you say can take it back! You can keep me from the Tallest forever, but the records will always say that I was an invader. They will have nothing to say about you."

The words buried themselves in her skull, the hideous truth of them all the more foul and bitter for having come from _Zim_, as if he had any right to be accurate, to have occasional moments of piercing clarity.

There was silence. Indigo and maroon eyes locked over the debris and the sound of GIR's squeals of pleasure. A piece of wall crumbled and fell. Neither one blinked, and the words stayed hanging in the air.

After the silence died down Zim turned, "hey, what happened to all that talk of killing me?" He might have been discussing the weather, if, you know, there was weather in space.

Tak jerked as if woken from a deep sleep, except it was a nightmare, and it wasn't over just yet. She gathered the remnants of her ego around her, "oh, I didn't come here to kill you, Zim."

"But you just said you did!"

"I meant generally! I'm not going to physically kill you right now!" Tak struggled to hold some of her composure, "in fact Zim, I'm not going to physically kill you at all, I have no desire to be exiled back to planet Dirt."

"Then how are you going to kill me?" Zim blinked, corrected himself, "I mean, what is you plan to kill me that will inevitably be foiled by me?!"

"You know the problem with being a complete moron, Zim," Tak seemed to savour the insult, "is that so often your actions sow the seeds of your own destruction."

"Hunh?!"

She sighed and turned to the wreckage of the doorway. She stopped and glanced over her shoulder.

"All I want, Zim, is that when the last shred of your wretched life escapes your body, that you know it was my doing."

And she left, her robot trailing her.

Zim watched the doorway with vague disinterest. **That** had been an amusing diversion, and at least now he knew who was to blame for his communication difficulties. Now he just had to find out how she was doing it...

"GIR! Stop being broken and clean up this mess. I'll contact Dib and get him up here to do... searchy things."

GIR pulled together his remaining limbs and began piling away the rubble (for all of twenty seconds before instead building a little rubble house to live in) Zim brought up the internal comm.

The problem with occasional moments of clarity was that sometimes they turned on him.

Zim wasn't stupid- well yeah, he was. Incredibly stupid. But not all of him, as it were. He was not one hundred per cent pure stupid. There were parts of him that built (sort of) functioning time machines and concocted brilliant (kinda) evil schemes; and sometimes those parts aligned and conspired and listened when he didn't and came up with thoughts he didn't like.

These thoughts could destroy the carefully tended structures built into the very foundations of his mind. They could lay waste to the cities and tear down the defences, strip away the ego and the blindness and leave just... what exactly? What was it that you could find if you looked under all the ashes? What would look back at you?

And Zim realised that it had been over an hour since he switched on the console and he still hadn't called Dib. He pressed some buttons and watched as the signals were sent and connections were forged.

And he deleted those thoughts. They weren't important.

Author's Notes – And now Tak's in this. Good for me, 'cause I like her. We're getting all up in some semblance of plot here, but I know where I'm going with this. Oh yeah, before I forget, if you spot any niggling little errors, tell me, 'kay? Four chapters left. Yeah I know I said there'd only be eight, but I need a wee bit more room to develop characters and work on the plot blah blah I suck at this writing schtick.


	7. Run

Chapter 6 – Run

Dib raised a shaking hand to his head and brushed the ...piece... off. It flopped onto the floor and he felt something warm splash his foot. Thinking about that did not seem like a good idea, and for once he was glad that the new bulky plastic glasses made it difficult to look down.

The glasses were covered in splatter, he gazed out at the world through a sheen of gore and green. He raised a sleeve and wiped it away. He felt faint, and in some distant, still functioning part of his brain he was surprised he hadn't thrown up.

His fellow workers didn't seem to share his feelings. The faint tapping all around sounded like rain, perhaps if he could just close his eyes he could pretend that he was at his skool desk. Yes, that was it, in his coat, drowning out Miss Bitters, trying to think of a way to wash the paste off Zim before skool ended. If he could just focus on that...

"Sweet, promotion!"

The words jarred Dib out of his little fantasy (things had to be bad if his old skool days had become a **fantasy**) and he looked up to see a square-headed Irken getting comfortable in Mek's old chair. He swept the late alien's effects off the desk and placed a little mug with the words "You Don't Have To Be Tall To Work Here But It Helps!!!" engraved on it.

Dib felt a little sorry for the weasly Irken, though he scolded himself for it. He didn't feel guilty for having caused his death, but it was a horrible way to die; torn off your mortal coil so that your boss could prove a point. Said boss was slinking between the aisles, still dripping blood and bits of Mek onto the floor. When her patrol brought her close to his cubicle Dib could hear her humming.

Dib swallowed and tried to concentrate. He pawed at the keyboard in front of him, trying to think about work and not sudden death by psychotic Irken.

What did Zim expect him to do anyway? He'd not exactly been specific. Just that he somehow wanted Dib to use his experience to figure out how Zim was being impeded. He brought up the specifications for the ship, but they were partially censored and besides what he could see had so many little nooks and ducts that it would take weeks to check all the possible hiding places.

He could hear the dripping and cruel little tune that indicated that Venn was coming closer. He gritted his teeth and forced his hands to stay steady.

_I will **not** give her the satisfaction_

Dib didn't look up as she passed by, and his hands moved over the keys frantically. Her shadow lingered over him just a little too long before she turned and strutted down the next row. He exhaled.

_If she could kill me, I'd be decorating the desk with my intestines by now._

The thought did not cheer him.

How long would he have to stay here? Presumably he could leave once he'd finished this thing with Zim, but that could take weeks or months and he had no idea how to even begin. He was well aware that Zim, by some great cosmic joke, was the only thing keeping him from being made into Dib pate. What would happen if Zim decided that he was no longer useful?

_I have to get out of here how can I get out there's no way out_

The room felt incredibly vast and yet he was hemmed in, trapped. He was surrounded by monsters, every one a potential murderer. His hands hung useless, he stared into the screen in front of him, trying to block out everything, hoping that the words there would by some miracle twist into some kind of solution. His chest felt tight, skin felt as if he were sat next to a furnace. His breath came ragged.

_No way out think of something no way out nowayoutohgodnowayout_

His vision dimmed at the edges and the sounds of the room faded to white noise. He could not escape. It wasn't just his current situation; he was trapped no matter what. He would live and die under the control of this alien empire, he had no choice, no future but what they decided to offer.

His life just wasn't his any more, and that, above the fear and the hate and the guilt and self-loathing and Zim-loathing was what sent his heart crashing and his ribs screaming. There was nothing he could do about anything.

The thoughts looped and merged in his head. They built to a cacophony and he was sure that the Irkens must be able to hear them, they were so loud. He screamed back at them from the last blackened corner of his mind, but they would not stop in their mental and physical assault. They filled every millennium-long second with their litany.

_I can't... I can't stay like this. I have to do something. _

*

Well this was definitely interesting. The human had stopped hammering on the keyboard and was now staring at the terminal screen. Until she noticed the breathing and blinking she thought that it had suddenly died.

Suspicious. Venn made a mental note of it.

She picked at some Mek stuck to her sleeve. Yes, she had been long overdue in getting rid of him. He was very good at his work, but had made no attempt to hide his ambition, or his height. Besides, even in death he was serving his empire; the human was visibly shaken and would surely be more likely to make mistakes now. Whatever Zim was planning, she would squeeze it from him soon enough.

As she turned and walked down row eight she noticed someone standing at the door to her office. Venn did not recognise the Irken, and right now that was all that was needed to set off alarm bells in her over-charged brain. She approached and tapped the newcomer's shoulder.

"Can I help you?"

Turned and regarded her with indigo eyes that were drawn to the bloodied state of Venn's person. Female, with a carefully constructed unreadable face even in the face of the taller, gory Irken.

"I need to speak to the superior officer. It is a most urgent matter."

"I am in charge, you will address this 'matter' with me. Second Captain Venn. State your name."

The other looked at her coolly, "I do not need to introduce myself to you, Second Captain. Merely comply with my request and I will be on my way."

"And why exactly will I be doing this?"

Something tugged at her sleeve and she leapt aside. A strange looking SIR unit with one oversized paw gazed at her and pressed a disc into her hand. She took it and looked back at the female's impenetrable eyes. Venn shrugged and pushed the disc into the nearest terminal, brushing aside it's worker who decided that in view of recent events taking issue with harassment from his boss was not a good idea.

The contents of the disc were not extensive; a seal from the Tallest (or more likely one of their aides) giving the bearer the right to do pretty much anything they wanted. Venn scanned the thing desperately but there was precious little small print to pick through. Frustrated, she handed the disk back to the unnamed female.

"All right, what do you want?" Clipped tones, hoping to get it over with quickly.

The slightest tug of a victorious smile, "I want to talk to the human you recently took on, allow me to escort him to my ship. It will not take long"

An explosion of thought overran Venn's brain. This was, this was, what was this?! Cursing herself for not thinking of it sooner, she scanned the visitor and searched her own PAK's database for a match. Two pieces of data came up in quick succession.

First the personal file. It was mangled almost beyond recognition. Her computer had barely been able to make a match at all, having to resort to hand measurements and antenna width. It looked like a simple corrupted file, but Venn had been in her position long enough to see the signs. The data had been tampered with, albeit expertly.

The second part was unexpected. She'd scanned the whole of the Irken, and that included the disc she still held. A fake, again very well made, but fake nonetheless.

And she wanted to talk to that thing in her own ship, one of the very few places on Admin23 where Venn would be unable to monitor the conversation. She was good. If it weren't for that forged seal, Venn would have suspected an undercover operative. But this was a rogue. For the good of the Empire, Venn was duty-bound to turn her in.

But she wanted to talk to Zim's human. Perhaps relaying information on some resistance movement for the inferior to report to Zim?

It was all so clear now; no Irken could be as stupid, as moromic as Zim. Constantly avoiding death and escaping exile, it was all so ludicrous it had to be an act! Of course it was her duty to defend the Empire against any threat, and Zim was certainly a threat. Perhaps an uprising from the short Irkens? But turn this rogue in now, and she'd loose her chance to link her to Zim...

The human was definitely the key. Let him talk to this enigma, in his weakened state he would be easy to break, and she could get all the evidence she'd need to have the Tallest lift Zim's status. Then she would take great pleasure in ripping the traitor's skin from his bones.

*

_Zim_

_Zim_

_Zim_

It took Dib a moment to focus and realise that the word had started to appear outside his head as well as inside it. There screen showed some kind of index, long list of files of some kind, and he was apparently in the 'Z' section.

Zim-phobia, Zim-allergy, Zim-related spontaneous combustion... Some kind of medical files? How had he ended up here? There was a thin layer of sweat on his skin. He breathed as deeply as he could and let it out slowly. His tried to stretch out his limbs and found them sluggish, and a part of him insisted that it was the weight of his chains of guilt and servitude.

_Oh for... when did I get so emo? Gotta pull myself together, gotta find a way out. **I will get out. **I will._

_Somehow._

Slow, deep breaths.

"It's been a long time, Dib."

_What?! Here, now?! Because you know, my day just wasn't crappy enough yet._

"Tak! What do you want?"

"To talk. Come with me. We can discuss this in my ship without fear of eavesdropping," she gestured to Venn, who was standing just inside glaring distance, holograms flickering over her eye.

She did not look happy, but then Dib had pretty much already figured out that they weren't going to be bestest friends any time soon.

"Sure, why not?" The smile came easily.

Tak nodded and walked away, and Dib noted Mimi trailing behind her. Dib pulled himself out of his chair, brushed off his shirt, and followed.

_Don't look back, stand tall. I will **not** give them the satisfaction._

More corridors and sci-fi sliding doors. The walk wasn't really that long, but after a long space journey in a packing crate, a physically anticlimactic but mentally infuriating showdown with his greatest foe, watching a senseless and brutal murder and enduring the resulting panic attack, he was exhausted.

They entered the small hangar, and he looked up at the sleek, dark masterpiece before him.

_New ship. **Cool** new ship. Wish I was in the mood to really geek out over this, but right now I just hope it has comfy seats._

It did have comfy seats. Dib fell back into one and closed his eyes. The little robot took up a guard position near the door, and Tak sat in the pilot's chair, revolving it to look back into the ship, at Dib.

"It's a nice ship," he looked past her, "uh, where are the controls?"

Tak glanced back at the bare console. "After our encounter on Earth I decided to build my next ship with sudden robot possession in mind; no panels to dance on or screens to break." She glared at Mimi, who looked suitably ashamed.

"Then how do you fly it?"

"With this," she pulled a cable out of her PAK and plugged it into a small port on the chair. The ship lights flicked on and Dib felt a thrumming engine through his chair.

Tak smiled at him across the cramped space, "my own brain, a little more reliable than an artificial intelligence."

Despite himself, he smiled back. Tak was one of them, but at least she could hold her own half of a sensible conversation, unlike a certain other alien. She sat back and regarded him.

"You look absolutely hideous, even more than before."

"Yeah, well, Zim brought the apocalypse down on my planet and all the hairdressers and boutiques got set on fire."

He could feel the chill in the air from the moment he uttered Zim's name. Tak didn't say anything for a long while, and he leaned back in the seat and began to drift off. Something hit him in the face and he flailed, eyes snapping open. He felt a small weight in his lap and looked down to see a pink cylinder with the insidious Irken logo printed on it.

He glanced up at Tak in time to catch the straw she flung at him.

"Drink it. I need you awake."

Dib looked down at the container and considered his options.

_Could be poisoned, or some weird alien fluid that will kill me. Could be freakish Irken caffeine that will burst my eyeballs. _

_You know what? It's not grease or recycled sewage and there's nothing growing on the carton, I'll take it._

He did so, piercing the lid and sucking it up.

_Weird, it's really foamy, like it's all foam. Well I guess Irken drinks can't be water-based. It's not really unpleasant but_

_Wow_

_Wait_

_Woooow_

_This is just... wow. Wow._

His eyeball-bursting theory didn't seem quite so far-fetched any more.

_I may never have to sleep again._

He bounced on the seat a little, and glanced up to meet Tak's hard stare.

"I want him dead."

Dib felt his insides go cold, but deep in a corner of his mind something pricked up it's ears.

"Zim?" she nodded.

"I've been watching him. He's losing his mind, assuming he ever had one to lose. When he requested that a human be transferred into counter-intelligence, I knew it was you. I found out where you were stationed and tried to warn you, but you must have already been in transit. I need your help. Will you help me?"

He stared back at her.

_I thought I'd have an argument here. Some conflict. But I know. I just thought I'd have something more to say than just_

"Yes."

She nodded again.

"Tomorrow I'm going to blow the power on this level. The security systems will be offline, and no security staff on this level; Zim drove them away. You will go to Zim's office. I can't give you a weapon, considering where you are working, so you'll have to improvise."

She narrowed her eyes and leaned forward.

"And you will have to improvise well, Dib, because if he thinks that you are a serious threat, he will kill you. Either by himself, or he'll turn you over to someone else as a slave gone rabid. They won't take chances, and you will be disposed of. I will not be able to help you if you fail."

_So it all boils down to you not wanting to get your hands dirty? You know, I think I can live with that._

"I'm the only one who can get you out of here Dib,** if** you succeed. I need you to succeed, Dib. He cannot be allowed to exist any longer. He is a menace, he destroys everything he touches. For the sake of the future of my Empire-"

"I get it! Zim's a monster and he needs to be put down, and I can do it! But I'm not going to do it for you or your stupid evil Empire. This is, it's, it's about revenge!"

She jolted at his outburst, he was on his feet and shouting now but couldn't remember how he got there, then Tak relaxed back into the chair and smiled.

"Yes, I suppose it is. When you're finished come and meet me in the maintenance room. I can get you out of here before they fix the power and find Zim."

Tak unplugged herself from the ship and stood up. Dib took that as a sign that the meeting was over and moved towards the door, but felt claw gripping his shoulder.

"That... Venn. You might want to be careful with her. She wants to kill you. Quite a lot."

"I'd noticed."

_*_

Before he could even sit back down at his bloodied desk Venn appeared at his side and told him that Zim had requested his presence immediately. Her voice was remarkably calm and civil, but she stared into his face intently.

_Zim.I can do this. Bluff my way through today, and tomorrow_

_Tomorrow this ends._

Author's Notes: DATR? What's that? There is definatley NO subtext here whatsoever! I may or may not be able to get out a new chapter before the new year starts, depends on the whims of the holidays.


	8. Take Two

Chapter 7 - Take Two

Venn didn't escort him this time. She locked herself in her room without comment and one of her lackeys skittered to the door and gestured for Dib to follow. He did so.

What was with crazy Irkens and these mood swings? Tetchy to ultra-violent to twitchy to this new sulky bit, all in just a few short hours. After Tak's warning he supposed he ought to be wary, but the caffeinated sugar-foam coupled with the prospect of escape had left him fairly relaxed about the universe and his place in it.

He'd probably need to put on a pleasant front for Zim anyway, even if the thought of seeing him again was making his heart drum wildly against his ribs.

…_wait, that came out wrong..._

He could get through this. He was going to escape, he was going to get away from all this madness.

He was going to make Zim pay for those faces he saw when he slept.

For a moment a vivid image or Mek meeting his grisly end snatched at his attention, but he pushed it safely away. Just one more day.

*

When was the Dib going to show up?

Zim had been on edge ever since he made the call to Counter-Intelligence. He couldn't place why. **She** must have done something, his thoughts were acting strangely, something was whispering to him, in the peripheries of his mind.

However, said remarkable mind held no delusions of failure. He and the human had crushed Tak's machinations once before, they could do it again. Bringing Dib to the ship had been an excellent manoeuvre. It would be just like back on Earth. Maybe he could even arrange to have a new coat brought on board.

Maybe, after his inevitable victory, he could sort of... keep him around. Like a new henchman. He'd always thought that the Dib had a very admirable evil streak under all that foolishness. He could... clean up after GIR, or something.

Meanwhile, GIR himself had found a comfortable sheltered spot, and had acquired a large box of popcorn.

While not the best evil minion, he did have a good instinct for spotting the potential for entertainment.

*

As he approached the door, Dib noticed that he was suddenly alone. His escort had slipped away at some point, showing some rather refreshing common sense.

And now he was at the door- oh. At the large hole where there had been a door. Huh.

The next moment Zim had appered and hooked his head around the edge of the new hole and leered down the corridor. And the other end. Then at Dib. And he smiled.

_He's being **sincere** again. Except it's not just patriotism this time, is it …?_

_Oh crap. Happy. He's happy to see me._

He was suddenly very acutely aware of how few people had ever been happy to see him.

Then Zim pulled him into the room, hard enough that he almost pitched forward onto the floor. Which seemed to be covered with a faint silvery dust, with harsh scuff marks and a few metallic shards. He scooped some up and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger.

"What is this stuff?"

Zim's grin twisted into an ugly scowl. Dib tensed. He remembered these sudden landslide shifts in emotion, memories closely associated with sudden, horrible, often deeply stupid events.

"Tak. Takky Tak and her things she does and... and stuff."

Of course, Tak had had contact with Zim. Breathe, breathe, it's okay. Okay. He doesn't know.

His immediate world turned green. Zim was right in his face, and he had to suppress a learned shudder. The old disguise had never been particularly convincing and although some cynical part of his mind thought he'd got the standard ugly human personality down just right Dib had always firmly held in his mind the 'alien' image. But right now those uncovered eyes staring into his with determination and _oh god_ trust and just a hint of fear. He looked so unbearably _human._

"She's planning and plotting, Dib. I don't kn- She's covering her tracks. There was a bit where she spoke to me and explained some things, but aside from that her scheme is impenetrable, it cannot be penetrated! And you should have heard what she said -**LIES! **Horrible lies!"

_Not fair. Just not fair. He can't pull this on me now. He can't choose this moment, of all moments... He couldn't have waited? Just one more day and he'd be dead. Because I'd have killed him. And I can do that. After what he's done, I can definitely do it. It's just that I could do it a lot more definitely if he'd just stop looking at me like I'm his only friend in the world._

"Oh, really? Uh, wow." _Yeah, that sounded really shocked, _"Um, and she left... glitter on your floor?"

"Huh? Oh, that's from when she blew up my door," he waved a claw at the hole in his wall, "I could have fixed it, of course, but I was busy working on GIR. He was... slightly damaged after fending off Tak's rabid little robot cat thing."

"She pulled of ma legs! Ma whole leg, right there on tha floor. Wheeee Hooooo! I think she loves me!"

Dib nodded. He couldn't really think of an appropriate response, and this was all rapidly spinning into very, very hazardous territory. He was sure he must look suspicious as hell, bloody and sweating and slightly jittering on some foamy high, but Zim had stopped toeing the dust and was looking straight at him, and he really wasn't noticing.

_Oh crap. It's a role-reversal. I'm the one lying, the infiltrator, spying out his weak points and pretending to be some harmless little thing, hoping that the ruse will hold until I can drive the knife into his back. The only difference is, he's buying it. I'm better at this than he is. Was. If I keep this up he'll never see it coming..._

"_How do you think this is going to end?" And then a sound to brief to be a scream, and Irken blood on his hands..._

"Dib? Hey, Dib!" A gloved hand waving in his face, "Hey! Pay attention, these are important things of which we speak!"

His breath hitched it his throat a little, but he managed to stammer some affirmative. Zim nodded.

"We can't let her do whatever it is she wants to do. My reputation is at stake! All those years carefully crafting the **perfect **invasion, building the most **amazing** of technology and crafting the subtlest of infiltrations, doing battle with a most cunning and resourceful opponent- good job with that, by the way -and she's trying to undo it all with the most **ridiculous** of fabrications!" He waved his fists around in front of his face. "And also she wants to kill me or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention. Then she left and I thought about... some stuff. And then I called for you. And you... didn't show up, for ages. Where were you, anyway?" and **now **there was a hint of hostility in his tone.

Okay, he had to concentrate. If he was going to screw up horrendously and get himself killed, it would be now.

"I was... busy... with... a human thing... that I had to do. Which was why I took so long. Because I was doing that human thing," _and certainly not being recruited to assassinate you by the very person you want me to help you catch. _

Zim squinted at him. And then his eyes widened, "oooh right. Yeah, I heard about that thing." He patted Dib's shoulder gently, "you poor, poor human. The indignities your species must face, slaves to your primitive biology. If only you had the intelligence to augment yourselves with cybernetic technology such as ours!" He smiled smugly, "it must be unbearable, getting all icky and tetchy once a month."

"Wha... I... you think I'm having a... period …?"

"Of course. I know almost everything there is to know about human stuff. I think Ms Bitters mentioned it one time. It sounded **disgusting.**"

_Why not? _

"Yeah, Zim. I was busy with my period. That's what kept me from getting here."

"Well it's nothing to be ashamed of I'm sure. You can't be held accountable for your species' failings. In fact, I've been thinking, Dib. For a human you've always been quite impressive, certainly smarter of brain than most of the others. After this Tak thing is all finished, if you don't have any pressing slaving engagements, you could be my servant and help me with, y'know, evil things, and," he gestured around the room, "paperwork or something. Hanging out around the ship, lauding our superiority! It'd be neat."

"..."

_This is..._

Zim turned sharply and marched over to the centre of the room, and switched the terminal on.

"But first, to business! Which is to say, Tak. She's mean. But in order to stop her we shall be far, far meaner. It is time for us to act, she must be nearby, maybe she hasn't even left the ship. Maybe we could track her by her PAK, or by her robot's energy signature. You search through her files and the records of her visits to Admin23."

"I can't do this."

_Who said that?_

"What do you mean?"

_Oh. It was me. Why the hell did I say that?_

"Dib? You're acting all weird again. Try to keep your hormones under control and pay attention to Zim."

_Say: Sorry, I guess I just drifted off there_

_Say: I'll get right on those files, Zim_

_Say: I was just thinking about that offer_

_Say:I was just thinking about Tak_

_Say **something**_

"I hate you so much, Zim."

… _well, that's it. Here lies Dib, loving son and brother. _

Turned from the keyboard, voice quiet and slicing. "What. Did. You. Say?"

_he died as he lived_

"I hate you. You, your Empire, your entire species of genocidal maniacs. I hate you, I hate that I'm forced to work for you, and I hate listening to you all bitching about your problems as if you think the universe revolves around each and every one of you. Why the hell should I help any of you?"

_not knowing when to give in and shut up._

The growl originated in the alien throat and swarmed ahead of Zim as he advanced across the floor and stood, seething.

"You miserable wretched _ungrateful _little human worm! I brought you here, away from the greasy horror of Foodcourtia, offered you shelter and safety in the glorious Armada, even offered you the chance to permanently work at my side, to be the highest ranking human in all of existence, and you repay me with this, this-"

"This what, Zim? Bitterness? Revulsion? Why do you suppose that could be? At least on Foodcourtia I knew where I stood! They thought I was scum and they treated me like scum. And then you take me to this fleet, the armada that burned my planet, populated by psychopaths tearing each other apart for a chance to kill me! And you want me to be your, your pet? Your butler? Your bestest friend? You destroyed my entire race, Zim!" His voice was picking up speed and force. The words had been held back too long.

"Your race was worthless! I brought you civilisation! The chance to be a part of something great; the destiny of the Irken Empire! The worthy uplifted and the useless purged! A planet choked with morons and filth! But under my fist you were ascended to the stars!" Zim took another step forward, driving up the glittering dust around him in a shimmering aura. But Dib had come too far to stop now.

"**Your** stars, Zim, not ours! Most of them may have been pointless idiots, but not all of us! We had potential, we could have made our own destiny, not just been a part of yours! All those people, those faces... You and your leaders, if you'd chosen some other planet to conquer, to burn, would they all have died like that? You had no right!"

"NO RIGHT?!" Zim lunged at him, all sharp, sharp teeth, "On a powerful world, true warriors or great scientists would have fought back! You had your chance to defend yourselves! The humans were not without their champion, _Dib,_ or have you forgotten?" Glinting, cold eyes, "you were their only hope against the great invader Zim, and you were a failure as a hero."

That drew blood, and the slash of smile across the alien face was well aware of it. Dib tried to stab back with voice or gaze, but Zim was _right_. He'd failed them all, pure and simple. Those faces, they were his charges, and whether they liked it or not, knew it or not, they were relying on him for their very survival.

Zim watched him writhing under his gaze for a long minute. Earth burned in those eyes. Zim had taken-

_Wait._

_Zim. Zim. It's **Zim.**_

_No._

"Well, now that you finally understand the situation-"

"No."

A weary, indulgent sigh, "oh Dib-worm, what is it now?"

They're eyes met, pale flecks of hazel against maroon opals.

Zim smirked.

Dib laughed. And continued doing so for some time.

After a while Zim started to shuffle on his feet.

"What? What is it that is so funny to you?"

Gasping, blinking, almost on his knees and _god how did I not see this? It's _"**you**, Zim! You came to Earth in a wig and contacts and your robot dressed as a green dog! Your giant mecha destroyer blew out the city power and then exploded! You once tried to poison the water supply with coupons for Mac Meaties, and even you weren't sure how that was supposed to work! If I was a loser of a hero, then at least it was fitting. You were a loser of an invader, I know it, Tak knows it, and you know what, Zim?"

He was _retreating_. Backing away, twisting an antenna in one fist. And that was real fear, yes, the knife held over his throat and all that was left to do was to twist and swipe. Maybe there was more than one way to slay this monster.

"I think that **you **know it, too."

Zim's arms dropped to his sides. His fingers twitched and his gaze was pallid, turned inward. After an extended, pregnant pause Dib ffelt his body relax, and began to wonder if Zim was ever going to snap and get all stabby.

And suddenly, he was being gently handled back towards the exit.

"Be sure to check Tak's files thoroughly, she's probably messed with the data. She must have some sort of contact in the Armada to have gained access without being blown up. And she must have-"

"Zim …?"

It was the smile. It was scary.

"Hmm?"

It was really scary.

"I, uh, nothing, I guess. I'll go do that stuff, then."

"Yes, Dib. Yes you will." The grip on his shoulder became hard and sharp, cutting into the skin, "You'll do it, because I told you to, and you have to do what I say."

Dib left the room, turning to stand and face Zim. A freezing heat was gathering in his stomach, and staring into the glassy eyes he wasn't at all sure what was staring back.

"Everything you do, until the day you die... You will always be an Irken slave."

*

Forty-six steps, left turn, twenty steps, left turn, four steps, straight on, sixteen steps, door.

Past the aisles. Eyes watching his every move. Look back to their work as he passes. Rainstorm of tapping claws. Mechanical hum boring into the brain, light catching in the plastic of the glasses. At the desk. Chair. Fingers spread on the cool surface, still.

Always a slave. An Irken slave.

Maybe somewhere far back in the past of his planet a tiny crawling thing pawed it's way onto the banks of a raw and bleeding world and thought better of it, and slithered back into the sea.

And maybe on an older, wiser planet on the other side of existence one tribe of little green critters decided that perhaps they could be friends with the other tribe of little green critters on the opposite side of the valley, and put down their pointed sticks and heavy rocks, and had a big, happy party instead.

Maybe the Earth moved on and it's people learned how to develop their intellect with all the vigour previously reserved for developing celebrity reality shows, and the boy with the weird hair and the cool trenchcoat grew up to chase crop circles and catch ghosts with improvised gadgetry. He probably has an even cooler coat.

Maybe, as he sat at the desk in that room on that ship he screamed, or cried, or maybe he folded his fingers together and thought about power cuts, and the fastest route to the maintenance room, and where all the blunt objects were kept. And how they could be most effectively employed He probably smiled at that thought.

But here, now, he looked up from the spread fingers, and saw the computer screen in front of him. Medical files, ailments and maladies from across the firmament. Irken biology.

_Maybe..._

*

Under the purple flourescence the smile remained long after its audience had left.

Invincible. Zim was invincible. He twined his claws behind his back, standing tall, and laughed softly, contentedly. GIR tried to dig through the wall opposite. He had an instinct for these kinds of things.

The buildings had been dashed to the ground, and the denizens who were still breathing were running, but Zim strolled down the streets of his mind casually. If the shattered foundations and torn structures unnerved him then he did not show it.

Author's Note: I don't know why this chapter has a Doctor Who reference. I'm such a nerd. Next chapter sometime in the next two weeks, with any luck. Writing a Thrilling Climax ™ is hard.


	9. Darkest

Chapter Eight – Darkest

He'd been doing a lot of typing. GIR had worn his hands down to stubs scratching at the wall and had then replaced them from the box of spares. How he had done this without any hands was somewhat perplexing, or it would have been if Zim was in any right mind to be perplexed.

Typing, typing. That was the thing. The scratching and whimpering had been slightly distracting, and he'd been a long while without food, and at one point he'd heard someone sobbing obnoxiously, which threw off his rhythm, then he realized that it was him, so he stopped. It had been quiet since then. He'd typed quite a lot. Yes, it was good.

Magnificent. Zim had always known that he'd be the salvation of his Empire. Maybe the greatest Irken ever to live. Not greater than the Almighty Tallest, of course, they were really amazing, never that great. Except...

Maybe he was greater than the Almighty Tallest.

Another page finished. That was over two hundred so far. He was just getting started. So much planning to do, so, so many problems to fix... How had his glorious Empire ever survived this long? It was all going to take so much time and effort to fix. But he **would **fix it, yes. Whatever else they said about him (and, for the first time in his life, he was beginning to truly understand exactly what it was they **did** say about him) no one could accuse him of idleness in the face of his duty.

Truly he never ceased to amaze himself. Although those words were more than a little hollow now. The seemingly endless depths to his own stupidity and dependence on his foolhardy delusions. So very, very, sad. Strange that the Human larva had been the one to break through the thick armoured wall of his ego, clearing the fog and letting him see, let him see... everything. Oh, such things he could see.

But after all those years trying to destroy him, to defeat and undo him, perhaps it made perfect sense that Dib had, in fact, managed to do just that. He'd have to do something about him, eventually. Tak, too. He would not allow any risk to himself, any risk to his work.

Claws blurred until they ached and he ignored them. Words poured out from dark corners of his mind, synapses that had been forgotten and all but severed now crackled and hummed. After waiting and biding for a lifetime sleek shapes uncoiled from their hides and crept forward, already whispering to Zim and to each other. They had been watching. They had endured. And they had made plans.

Words on the screen.

*

The room was empty, with a layer of dust and a collection of long-since abandoned snack wrappers. An observer could easily assume that the old maintenance workers had vacated their office with a great deal of haste, pursued by the devil himself. It would be pretty accurate.

She wiped some of the grey sheen off the desk and delicately detached a large panel. Wires and boxes and glowing, buzzing metal innards. Smashing them would be rash and dangerous and oh so very satisfying.

The eternal conundrum of the invader; destroy in a razing fury, or tease apart beautifully from the inside out. After a moment of wonderful anticipation, she chose the former. There was a moment of red, sparking poetry, and then she sat back and waited. For Dib, and an ending.

*

The words vanished.

Thoughts screeched and flailed, cut off from their anchor, then regrouped. He was suspended in darkness, if not for the feel of the keys under his fingers the world could have ceased to exist.

"GIR! Make some light or something!"

"Yes, my master!"

A red glow pushed against the black. Zim turned around slowly, scanning the room. Finding no obvious cause for the blackout, he walked towards the saluting robot. Kneeling on the floor, he rested his head against the cold metal and closed his eyes.

A throbbing, a dull vibration.

"The engines are still operational, so the power cut must be localised to this section. I **tried **to explain to those drones just how poor their techniques were. Why must they all stay clothed in their ignorance?"

The light faded into a pale green. "They should be naked instead, master!"

"Indeed. Still, I am sure that eventually they will stumble upon their mistake and correct it, and I can get back to marching the Empire forward into a new dawn of world-exploding might!"

"And I can be the king of the angry turtle people! Fear my pointy shell!"

Sighing, "GIR, could you _please_ go back to being an intelligent and helpful servant until the lights go back on?"

"Your servant is in another castle master!"

"Be quiet."

Zim leaned resignedly against the wall. GIR's light waxed and waned softly, and his breath started to flow in synch with it unconsciously. The furthest corners of the room remained dark, and where the glow ended and the shadows began small movements caught in the corner of his eyes. The lights would soon return and banish them.

The old Zim had been brash and hasty, but the new Zim could be patient.

He glanced down. "So, GIR... What are you doing these days?"

The machine returned a crooked grin. "Have you seen ma ketchup?"

"Uh-huh." He drummed his claws against the wall.

GIR began to murmur a familiar melody, and soon enough had launched into a reprise of that great lyrical triumph; The Doom Song.

Zim straitened up, "I have been sufficiently patient! If these morons are incapable of fixing the power, Zim is forced to do it himself!"

He stormed out of the office and into the hallway, dragging his musical sidekick with him.

Through the dark hallways, and only the faint emergency lights to show the way. He misplaced himself a few times, but soon enough the doors to the maintenance room appeared out of the black. Without power, jammed shut.

"GIR! Open the doors!"

"Yes sir!" Robotic claws tried and failed to find purchase in the seam between the two doors. The scrabbling and grunting dissolved into a tapping dance and a gloomy, melancholic cover of his favourite song. Red light to green.

Zim pushed passed him with a hiss and extended PAK legs to scratch at the sliver between the metal sheets. Gritting his teeth, he stabbed into the gap, caught it with one spike, then another. Using the other two to brace himself in the cramped hall he strained and heaved.

The metal crumpled, squealed, then parted with a screeching of tortured mechanisms. Panting, Zim slumped to the floor and gazed blankly into the room beyond.

"Pah, empty?! Lazy creatures, abandoning their post! Such treachery to their Empire! I shall report them to the Tallest in my next... oh. I shall commit this transgression to memory for later reporting!"

It wasn't dark. A small portable lamp was lying on the floor, knocked askew. A few eviscerated cables hung from an opened panel set into a raised desk. A vent fixed into the wall exhaled softly. The room felt untouched, everything neglected and dusty, but there were footprints set in the grime. Zim got to his feet and followed them in. Righting the light, he held it up and surveyed the room.

Nothing was moving but GIR, drawing smiley faces in the dust.

_Above him, a soft metallic clicking_

He walked towards the gutted panel and examined it, toying with the shredded cables. Beyond repair, he disconnected them and carried them, limp and lifeless, to a hatch in the wall. Hauling it open, he deposited the ruined innards into the void beyond, to fall and be sucked out through the airlock, into space. Whatever irrelevant had broken it, they hadn't bothered to unplug the main feed. Zim unplugged it himself, having no real desire to be electrified in the midst of his charitable endeavour. Opening one of the abandoned boxes he gathered replacements and went to thread them into the gaping wound.

GIR pulled a piece of candy out of his skull and popped it, wrapper and all, into his mouth. He looked towards his master, who was being orbited by several yodelling toasters, as usual. Although the toasters were looking a little more nervous than usual just recently.

Master hissed and cursed under his breath, walking around the room, aggressively pulling apart, locking together and occasionally kicking various devices around the room. GIR followed his progress, floating in the blank apathy before some random circuitry would fire and hurtle his mind down a new avenue of excitement and chaos and brightly coloured meat. He heard a quiet, silver sound, like a tuning fork in a squirrel's eye. He looked up, towards the pretty sound.

"Hiiiiiiii Tak! Wotchu doin' up there? Did you bring waffles? I like waffles!"

"GIR! I'm trying to work here and you and your noisy-" He blinked. Things were sinking in a little better now, through the cracks. "What did you say?"

No answer. He turned. The room was distinctly free of GIR. His antenna bristled on his head. He backed slowly into the nearest corner and cast his eyes wildly around the room.

"Tak?"

He took a step forward, black boot sounding too loud on the ground.

"Tak?"

GIR's plummeting form hit him hard on the back of the head. Zim fell forward, catching himself on his palms and spinning to glare at the robot. Through his churning vision he tried to focus on GIR, readying some harsh words which evaporated before they could leave his mouth. A scrap of dark fabric gagged the metal mouth shut, and in normal circumstances this would be a rather pleasant turn of events. Light stuttered red and green. He reached down to pull at the material, grasping at air through the double vision.

A hand snatched his and moved it firmly down. Through the clearing fuzz he looked up into Tak's eyes. She stared at him, cold and still and empty.

"You are not supposed to be here."

Zim narrowed his eyes at her, and snatched his hand away. Bracing his hands on the floor he pushed himself to his feet.

Tak pushed him hard. Falling back to the ground, he skidded across the floor and thudded against the wall.

"You are not supposed to be here."

He stood, leaning hard against the wall, growling fiercely.

"Has Zim upset your carefully laid plans, Tak? It seems to be a persistent flaw in your character."

Tak's eyes stabbed at him. She kicked his muted sidekick away, and stalked across the floor towards Zim. The edge of her shirt was torn; it's colour matched the gag GIR was wrestling with.

She stopped just out of his immediate reach. Tilting her head, she stared down at him as haughtily as her slight height advantage would allow.

"You should be dead by now. Or mortally wounded. How disappointing."

Zim twitched his claws and resisted the urge to break eye contact and re-appraise the room for threat. Instead he met her smug look with one of his own.

"Disappointing indeed, Tak. Cutting the power? I expected so much more."

She tilted her head at him, "I wouldn't relax if I were you, Zim. This is one mission you will not ruin for me." Her voice was calm, steady.

Zim chuckled.

Tak gave him a quizzical look, "something about all this amuses you?"

He opened his eyes and grinned up at her, "it is most interesting to see such foolishness from the other side." He started to laugh again, shoulders shaking with the effort.

"I see," Tak said, and Zim knew she really didn't. She seemed to shake herself and straightened up, softening her gaze with visible effort.

"Well I guess you get to live another day, Zim. Truly my plans are foiled. Now I suppose you'll take your SIR unit and go back to your quarters, leaving me to my mourning."

The lamplight glanced off GIR as he struggled with the tightly knotted cloth. It cast Tak's shadow against the wall, where Zim's caught and swallowed it.

"No, Tak, I don't think I will. I think that your plan isn't quite ruined yet, and you believe that if you can get me back to my office, and quickly, then you might yet succeed." He watched her eyes go wide, "you are, naturally, wrong. I guess I've beaten you yet again. It must be getting boring."

Zim felt the attack before his eyes had time to register. His left side jolted and he felt himself tumbling through the air, and his back protested loudly as he crashed down.

He slammed into the lamp and felt something crack, and the room snapped rudely into darkness.

Two mouths panted weakly in the dark. There was the sound of small shards of debris shifting as the smaller Irken silhouette moved. The room was dimly lit by an angry red glow as a metal hand found purchase on a splintered shard and sliced into the gag, but Tak's gaze never left Zim. She watched him turn to look at her, bleeding just a little as he picked the pieces of glass from his flesh.

"I understand, Tak. I know why you despise me. Because I am, or I _was_ a broken and pathetic creature, with no more right to be called an Irken than the Dib-monkey. Defective. But no longer. Now, oh, now I am something so much greater. Something the Empire needs. Now I can see."

Tak didn't seem able to looks away. Eventually she blinked and shivered violently, and Zim smiled.

"You, Zim... the Empire has no need for you. And it never will. Defective. Always defective. And you can't change that, Zim, no matter how you've deluded yourself. And this... whatever this," she gestured towards the eerie figure, "_is_, it's just another defect."

"Hah, oh Tak. You can't possibly begin to understand what I can accomplish. I have been wasted long enough. Don't you see? The defect is with the Empire. It needs to be corrected. That is my true mission. It always has been."

Still that smile in the red light, and Tak not sure whether to be horrified or in hysterics.

"You can't be serious. Even you can't truly be so monumentally foolish. Even if you had the skills, the intellect, the resources and the support to do anything of the sort, the Tallest would never allow it. Never."

He looked at her head tilted in contemplation.

"Well then, regrettably, the Tallest would have to go."

She looked at him, sure, _sure_, that she must have imagined it, and understood.

He meant it.

And the risk of being exiled, or executed, and living and dying with the shame of actually being punished for ridding the universe of _Zim_ didn't matter. He meant it.

Slowly she crouched to the ground and tensed, still looking into the fires in those eyes.

"For the good of the Empire."

She lunged, red and indigo and sparking silver. Zim leapt on metal legs and felt the crest of his skull brush the ceiling. Tak recovered and threw herself upwards in barely a second, and he pushed hard against the wall and propelled himself clumsily to the floor, crashing in a tangle of limbs mechanical and flesh.

Not a moment to breathe, she would not allow him the slightest chance to mount a defence. Dashing forward, she stabbed down brutally again and again at him as he scrambled and crawled away. He backed into the wall and threw his body to one side, but she caught a pair of his spidery PAK legs in hers and heaved him up, grasping his head in her hands and squeezing, squeezing until it seemed that his thoughts themselves became compressed and warped.

With a small animal noise he spat at her, blood blossoming against her cheek as she flinched and recoiled. He twisted and retracted the PAK legs, dropping from her grip and landing unsteadily on the floor, but not falling. Not falling.

He expected a scream of rage or some barked insult, but she manoeuvred away from the wall and regrouped a little away from him with great economy of movement and controlled, careful breathing. True military training honed to near-perfection in her every move. He couldn't match it.

He feinted forward, leaping backwards at the last moment to strike, silver darting. She ducked under the strands and tackled him, trying to get a grip on his neck. Wriggling, he clawed at her eyes and caught her a deep scratch just above the right, blood pooling in and around the her vision, and in the second she took to wipe it away he twisted her other arm and stumbled out of her grip.

But she had only superficial wounds; Zim's head was beginning to throb again and somewhere his exoskeleton was cracked, and being tossed about like a rag doll hadn't helped. Sensing movement behind him he jumped forward, wincing, and climbed onto the console. He reached down for the discarded panel cover and pulled it up in time to batter away Tak's latest assault, then rolled over onto his back and extended his PAK legs to lash back at her.

With blurring speed she dodged, ripped the panel from his unready hands and impaled it on the metal claws, driving it down to the base and the twisting sharply, and they tore and fell limp. With only the right set left he struck, desperately trying to run her through, and she picked up a hefty wrench from the toolbox and swatted them aside before pinning them in her own and battering them over and over, until they gave with a sickening high crunching sound. Panting, she dropped the remains and leaned over him, grabbing his face again, but not crushing this time. The cables and circuitry of the console jabbed into his back. Through the blood her eyes looked dull.

"For the... good... of... the em... pire..."

In the corner of his eye, Zim saw her raising those terrible blades to delivery the final, killing blow. He saw them descending, so fast, so fast.

And, for the last time, he smiled.

"GIR! Reconnect the primary power feed!"

Red light.

"Yes sir!"

Her eyes lit up then, wide and comprehending, and as Zim writhed from her suddenly lax grip she tried to stop the killing blow, but it was going too fast, too fast.

Talons plunged down and for the second time that night the naked wires were sliced and rent, bleeding electricity out into the cold, slender, and above all _metalic _legs of their aggressor.

Light flooded the room and flew in spirals from the shaking figure, and the legs tore loose as it thrashed and wailed. Charred, it fell against the wall, whimpering, and looked up at him.

Grasping it by the heated metal, he heaved it roughly from where it lay, and dragged it across to a hatch set into the wall. Spying the destination, the thing let out some rasping, stuttered protest, which faded away as it tumbled down the shaft and into the dark. The last thing it heard was the high pitched voice of the little robot, singing merrily.

And in the room there was a moment of quiet.

Zim stepped back and sealed the hatch. Turning away, he felt something brush against his boot, and bent down to retrieve the small disc. He turned it over and over in his grasp, eyes went wide for a moment, then placed it in the storage section of his PAK. It would be useful.

Deep in the much-maligned console some important sparking thing sputtered and frazzled before exploding, quietly, and the room fell once more into cloying darkness.

"GIR! You broke it!"

Author's Note: we're almost done, just a wee bit further.

(edit: tidied up a bit, so with any luck everything is a bit clearer now. Thanks to Tazer42 for pointing out a problem with the who-did-what-where.)


	10. Dawn

Chapter Nine – Dawn

_tap... tap... taptaptap_

_...taptap... taptap...tap_

_...click!_

Dib rested his fingers on the keys for a moment. He was getting better at figuring out which bits of information were relevant and which weren't. He memorised the page and then closed it, checking over his shoulder as much as he dared.

This brought back memories. Back at skool, he'd been able to finish any computer-related task very quickly, then he'd go straight to the eyeball site. Of course, he'd have to hide it fast whenever someone looked his way. For three years the entire class was convinced that he was a porn addict.

And now they were dead. And there was a good chance that, by the end of today, he would be too. So much that could go wrong. So many uncertainties.

_...always an Irken slave..._

He brought up another page. Complicated blueprints appeared on the screen. Right. This was critical. He had to get this just right... ugh, what he wouldn't give for a notebook and pencil... so if that part was the backup, and this went here... time would be a problem, better to reprogramme only what he needed and bypass the rest.

A throbbing pain started to pulse behind his eyes. He pressed shaking fingers into his forehead and tried to breathe slower. He'd not eaten a real meal in waking memory. And if an overdose of being tossed into space didn't kill him, lack of actual refreshing sleep would. A crazy old lady once told him that every hour of stress shaved a month off your lifespan. If that was even half right he was due to die approximately next Tuesday, at around breakfast.

No sound yet from the discreet little office at the far side of the room.

She was giving him a wide berth. Venn had interrogated his escort in her office, and although not so much as a raised voice had seeped through the door the guy had come out looking terrible. Being intelligence officers, his fellow workers had crowded around to ask him what she'd said. Being a paranormal investigator, Dib had immediately sneaked in close and eavesdropped on the aliens.

The pale little guard had brushed off all questions with what Dib assumed were Irken curses, but eventually he'd relented. Almost whispering he said three words that had been skulking in the background of his head ever since.

"She's gone_ wrong."_

He didn't know exactly what that implied, but he had a active imagination and some vivid first-hand experience to base it around. It's was probably not a good sign. One more problem he didn't need. One more stupid risk he'd have to take before this day was over. One more way to die.

If Tak pulled off her end of the plan, if he could memorise this data well enough, if Venn could hold off on the violence just one more day, and if Zim didn't do anything _too_ unexpected, then he might just make it. With just a little luck...

He'd been unlucky his entire life. Surely he was due a break now?

And then, in the most clichéd manner possible, everything went dark.

The whispering and clicking keys dissolved quickly. Silence and darkness. Dib closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. This would probably be the most peaceful things would get for a while.

Somebody started screaming hysterically in the dark, then stopped when no one else joined in. But that broke the silence and muttering swiftly raised to fill the gap. Confusion gave way to anger, and then to accusations and declarations of impatience and more of what Dib was coming to think of as Irken white noise.

The others began moving about the room, growing more and more irate as it became obvious that the power was not going to immediately return. Someone proposed that they contact Maintenance. This was met with murmurs that this _might_ be a good idea, so long as someone else did the actual legwork. Someone else proposed taking the rest of the day off. This was met with considerably more enthusiasm.

The hopeful cheering was cut off by a horrible piercing screech. Dib clasped his hands to his ears and winced. Turning, he clambered up as high as his chair allowed and peered over the edge of his cubicle wall. Through the black he could see flashes of light at the other end of the room. Sparks flying in tandem with the jarring sound.

His eyes weren't yet adjusted to the gloom. He heard the doors to her office relent and part and he heard the steady pace of her boots on the floor. She seemed to be glowing like some grey alien in an old school sci-fi flick. If it weren't for the expression on her face the cheesy illusion would be perfect.

She turned to look at him, catching his eye just before he managed to duck back down. She looked very... tired. And very pissed. And something vital behind the eyes wasn't communicating properly with something else.

_So that's what 'wrong' is. It would've been tragic if I'd died without ever finding out._

The footsteps stopped and he heard her voice whispering in clipped tones.

"Has the source of the power outage been determined?"

"Er... no, I don't..." He could hear the cower behind the voice.

"And why hasn't maintenance... ah. Of course. Zim." There was a smile, there. "If only we could all have moved out so painlessly when first he graced us with his presence."

He slipped out of his chair and moved to the wall, pressed an ear against it.

_C'mon, c'mon..._

She moved towards the centre of the room; closer to Dib. She stopped.

"Does anyone have enough expertise with... wires and things... to fix whatever this is?" she demanded.

_Now or never._

He drew one last breath, took a second to run over the plan and think up some cool last words, then stepped out, shielding his eyes from the lamp in her hand.

"I know a little about that stuff. I think I can fix it," his voice barely trembled at all.

She whipped around, eyes narrowing to slits. The light swung, scattering shadows. He held his ground. She straightened up, the feral monster retreating into the malevolent administrator.

"You're lying. You were a janitor. And a grease scrubber. You have no experience in repairing faulty wiring," she smirked.

He swallowed the lump in hie throat. "My dad's a scientist. He taught me a lot of stuff about computers and I've worked with your technology before."

"Really? When?" Her voice lashed out.

Inside his head he kicked himself. "When... Zim was on Earth. He and I were, uh, fighting, I guess?" Would there be some sort of retroactive insurrection charge for that?

Some of the other workers stuck their heads out as he spoke, ignoring Venn to stare quizzically at him.

"You and Zim... on your planet..."

Not the lynch mob he'd been expecting. "Er, yeah. That's what I said." It was difficult to gauge her reaction; the angry waves of I Hate You obscured pretty much all other signals. An antenna twitched.

"Uh-huh."

Dib rocked back on his heels. The silence was awkward, but then it was quite nice to have some down time.

"I think I could handle something as simple as a blown fuse," he let a little confidence into his voice, stunned to be back in the light after so long.

Venn didn't buy it, and darted at the weakness. "This is Irken technology, little human male-whelp. Far more complex than a simple 'blown fuse'." The others chuckled obediently.

He returned the sly grin. "Oh of course, it's probably a fault in the monolonium chain, brought on by a surge in power during the last heat shunt, forcing the neutron flow to reverse in polarity," he exhaled.

Murmurs of appreciation began to emanate from around the room. It was impressive technobabble, whatever it meant.

It ought to be; he'd been memorising it for hours. Thank god for a childhood spent obsessively watching the sci-fi channels.

She looked sufficiently stunned, but he could see her lips moving, and sooner or later she was going to work out that all that was so much bologna. Or some other meat-based product with less horrific memories attached. He cut it smoothly.

"So I'll need some tools. If you could just point me in the direction of the emergency store, I'll just help myself…?"

That got her attention. "Ha! Nice try, but I don't think so. You, and, er, you!" She pointed to two bulky workers. "Go make sure he doesn't take any weaponry. Only engineering equipment!" She pulled a lamp out of her pack and tossed it to one of them.

She gave him a smug, self-satisfied "that's got you!" look, and he did his best to look as disappointed as possible.

Smirking, she turned away. One of his two guards shoved him, putting a downer on his mood. He let them drag him along.

_Stage one complete. That was the easy part._

The two led him to a wall which was as smooth and dark as all the others. After a moment he took a step towards it and examined it, feeling slightly nervous. On closer inspection the word "Emergency Supplies" was etched into the surface, but it did not seem to denote any actual items of interest.

One of the guards tutted under his breath and shoved him aside roughly. Yelping as his knee caught to hard floor Dib scrambled to his feet. Pushing his glasses back into place on his nose he turned to scowl at his assailant.

The Irken just sneered at him and reached out. He pressed his two fingers into the wall, and with a click a door appeared in the metal and slid aside with a faint hiss. Straightening his clothes Dib stepped towards it and grabbed the first box within reach.

This would be difficult with those two hanging over his shoulder. Pawing vaguely at the foreign tools under his hands he chewed his lip thoughtfully. The average Irken attention span was not very impressive; if he could just draw this out until they got bored, he could get some breathing room to pick out exactly what he'd need. On the other hand, someone could get suspicious if he stalled too long.

There was an empty box with a handle on the next shelf up. He snatched it down, flinching at the mini-avalanche of objects and devices that someone obviously thought would be vital in an emergency. He tossed a few things into it distractedly.

It was surreal; sorting through these alien implements, trying to decide which of them would make the best impromptu weapon. This one was too heavy, this one wasn't sharp enough. This one wouldn't break the exoskeleton. He swallowed hard, cold sweat brushing the back of his neck.

He'd dreamed of this, of course, back on Earth. But he'd always been in a spaceship, gunning down the spaceships of the other colour, the enemy colour. Or on the end of a ray gun that left behind only dust or unmarked bodies. And there'd always been the generals, or his Swollen Eyeball team, or the president cheering him on. Not alone in the dark. Not with bruising and crushing and blood.

Cable cutters, some sort of fancy hammer, a little container of screws. He dropped a crowbar in the box with a dull thud. Glancing over his shoulder, he noted that the guards were talking snidely amongst themselves about past shore leave and a Vortian singer. Turning back he quietly pulled out a case and opened it.

Dib pulled out a scalpel and watched it gleam in the artificial light. Swallowing, he wrapped it in a scrap of bandage from the med kit and tucked it into a pocket. A roll of the thickest bandages went in amongst the clutter. He also took a bottle of what might be fungal infection cream but was hopefully anaesthetic Maybe he wouldn't have to-

_No. I'm a killer either way, but I'm not gonna be a coward as well._

He closed his eyes and forced his hands to be still.

_But maybe... maybe I should go through with Tak's plan,and not,_

_I don't want to die._

Just one more thing. Shaking himself off, he reached up to the top shelf and pulled out a panel roughly 4x4 inches. He blew off the dust and ran his fingers over the symbol on the cover.

He picked up the lamp and moved towards a cubicle. The guards jolted, approaching him with threats in their eyes. With an effort he ignored them, brushing aside the bemused worker at the desk. Pulling a cord out of his device he plugged it into a matching socket on the computer, them pressing a button on his panel.

The screen lit up faintly. Good, it worked. The files he'd found had been at least twenty years old by his estimate, and he had been worried about whether or not they'd have a working model.

He unplugged it and the screen died quietly. Turning to the guards, who'd paused at the sight of the glow, he smiled.

"Portable module. Can power machinery in an emergency." And it could also be used to control said machinery, albeit crudely, if programmed the right way. Dib had spent almost an hour at his console carefully memorising 'the right way'.

He carefully placed the module the pack. "Okay, I think that's everything I need. I'm ready."

Slamming the lid down he grabbed the box by it's handle and heaved it about two inches off the ground, shifting his grip and trying to lift from the legs. However one was supposed to do so. The guards walked away and Dib shuffled after them.

After an eternity in which he felt his arms were pulled out of his sockets, the pale lamp light met and joined with the larger, brighter glow from Venn's lamp. She smiled warmly at him, ignoring the two lackeys completely.

He dropped the box with a sharp clang and stretched his spine back into it's natural curve, sighing gratefully.

"Ready to go?"

"Yuh... yeah..."

He wrapped his aching hands around the handle and hauled it back up.

"I see you're very well prepared." She nodded towards the case.

"Yeah. I think I've already got a wrench, so you can leave that if you want."

She laughed, hefting the weight easily and tapping the opposite hand. "Keeping a spare wont do us any harm, will it," this wasn't a question.

He forced himself to look away from it. It was a _big_ wrench.

"Good point," he gulped.

She brushed past him, scattering the entourage, and marched towards the exit. Taking a deep breath, he followed

_I can do this._

The light disappeared around a corner and a second later a clanging crashing sound battered his eardrums and only some inherent preservation instinct kept him from dropping the box and shattering his toes. When he caught up to her the doors were gaping and forlorn and Venn was twirling her blunt instrument as if it were a baton.

She pointed it towards the hallway.

"After you."

He walked into the darkness, and after a moment she followed.

*

_I can't do this!_

They'd been wandering around seemingly identical corridors for just a few minutes, and Dib's wrists were making worrying noises. Venn kept on muttering darkly behind him, but that wasn't the problem.

At the end of the day he was going to have to murder an alien armed with four long knives by default, who would have no qualms about using them the second he became a threat. Then he'd have to escape this ship and avoid being caught and executed for his crimes for the rest of what would probably be a very short life.

He had nowhere to go, no home, no guarantee that he'd be safe even if he could get away and none of that was going to matter because he was going to die.

And Venn was covering him, too. He'd known it would be her, had been betting on it in fact, because that was just how his luck always went, but that made the whole thing that much more difficult.

But he had to do something, something quick, because they were almost at Maintenance and if she saw Tak then things were gonna get bad in a big way. He could see a dirty light up ahead, wait, that didn't make any sense. He glanced back over his shoulder and then put the case down carefully and crept forward. Without warning, a voice shouted out of the gloom.

"Pah, empty?! Lazy creatures, abandoning their post! Such treachery to their Empire! I shall report them to the Tallest in my next... oh. I shall commit this transgression to memory for later reporting!"

Dib almost swore, but Venn tackled him first. Clamping a hand over his mouth she dragged him around a corner and slammed him against the wall, feet dangling. Her voice was quiet, but every word was spat and frantic.

"_Zim!_ I knew it, human. Oh, did I know it. What's the idea, huh?! Incapacitate me in there and then take over this ship and then blow up the Armada with that little wretch!"

_Why is he here? Why is he here?! _

It was hard to focus on the potential problems this would have on his plan with a alien screeching in his face. His glasses had fallen somewhere so her face was swimming in a red fuzz under the lights. She was hissing threats he wasn't paying attention to as his thoughts raced. Her claws were dug deep into his shoulders, bruising.

Suddenly she wrenched him close enough that the tip of her tongue flicked his nose when she spoke, low and grinning, "but he wont, you know, little monkey spawn thing." She pulled him with her until they were leaning around the corner. Even with his glasses gone, his eyes were drawn to the doorway.

_Zim is right there..._

There were odd noises coming from the room. They reminded him for a moment of his dad working in the lab.

"What's going on in there?" he whispered to himself.

"Oh yes, you'd like it if I brought you right to him, wouldn't you?! I'd be playing right into your hands! He's got to come out sooner or later, and when he does, the first thing he'll see will be your flayed corpse!"

It took a second for his brain to catch up with his ears, and in that second she'd moved her hands to his throat with a clanging noise and started squeezing.

His fingers scrambled at hers vainly and he gasped desperately. He kicked his legs at to no avail. His vision darkened and flared with his heartbeat.

_Stupid! This... I can't... Zim should... should be the one... _

_I should've, should've stayed with Tak's plan..._

_should've been... better... should've_

_don't wanna, don't... if I could just get her hands off..._

_wait. That's, that's wrong... clanging noise? _

_She was holding..._

Everything was slow and quiet, like when he used to dive to the bottom of the swimming pool as a little kid. His hands felt a long way away, and moved clumsily.

_There..._

He could barely lift the weight, but the desire to survive lent him strength enough to raise the wrench and smash it across Venn's skull with a wet crack. She dropped, and he fell with her, coughing and clutching at his neck.

Dib lay on the floor and curled in on himself, panting. The dull throb returned behind his eyeballs with a vengeance and gradually moved to his whole body. He was shaking and cold. He didn't remember what made him get up, but he was standing over a body marked with a trickle of blood.

It was still breathing, and every few seconds a hand would twitch.

He'd have to be quick. He grabbed his glasses.

The toolbox was where he'd left it. He dragged it over and began sorting through the random objects to find the ones he'd picked specially. The portable module was switched on and arranged next to the lamp along with the delicate instruments he needed to reprogramme it. Other, simpler, more brutal items were brought out and put carefully to one side.

Presently he heard chaotic sounds from the Maintenance room, and gritted his teeth as he worked. But when the lights suddenly flickered bright accompanied by a horrible scream he paused before gathering up his things. The module was ready enough and it and the smaller tools went into his pockets. With one last glance towards the doorway he picked up the first of the other set he'd gathered. It wasn't as heavy as the wrench, but it had the same cruel aura.

He'd thought that he might falter, here, but his hands were too tired to shake. He felt like all his fear had been spent in that one burst of terror.

And that was it, and he was finished. Now he just had to move, before Zim stepped out of that room.

He dragged Venn's body away from the room, hoping that Zim's route back towards his office wouldn't stumble on it. If he found her, if he was alerted in any way, then it would be over. With that in mind, Dib stole a few seconds to hide the toolbox, too.

_Dad, Earth, Tak... it's all gone wrong. But I'm gonna make it right._

_I wont screw this up, too._

The package wrapped tightly in the strongest bandages was too big to fit in a pocket, so he tucked it under his arm, careful not to dislodge any wires. Then he left.

He didn't look back.

*

A few minutes later Dib was staring at a pair of doors that refused to open. He gave them a brief glance before returning to typing and trying not to think. It was risky, but he'd been expecting that and that's what the bandages were for, after all. He'd bypassed the security and subdued the core programme, and that was the hardest part. He was quite sure that he'd done it all right.

He didn't want to think about what would happen if he'd done it wrong. There were some things much worse than being killed, even being killed by a pissed Irken.

Tak was dead. He knew that with a leaden certainty. That scream had been horrible.

What was taking Zim so long, anyway? He was so close...

There was nothing else he could do with this. It was either perfect or he was about to experience horror beyond comprehension, and he was too far gone to care at this point. He rubbed his neck, wincing. There was going to be one hell of a bruise. With that thought he checked his wrist. He didn't have a watch, with was frustrating, so he guessed instead. How long had it been, quarter of an hour, twenty minutes?

He flinched and ducked as the lights came back on. This made three things apparent. First, he was so far on edge he was practically falling off the cliff. Second, he was not very good at telling the time. Third, he was not alone.

"hUmaN"

Blood had stained Venn's uniform and dripped sluggishly from the hem. Dib noticed the way it arced in the air as she lunged at him clumsily, but with disconcerting speed. He had just a second to register that he was cornered against two closed doors in a narrow corridor before she tackled him.

He struggled. She was heavier and stronger, but not all of her limbs were working in unison. He managed to get one hand free and pushed hard against her shoulder.

"wHy? WhAt diD hE pRomISe To mAkE yOu HeLp wITh hIS tReAcheRy?" spit and blood hit his face.

Dib looked at her eyes, how unfocused and dark they were.

"I don't know," he whispered, "why don't you look up my file, maybe that'll give you an idea."

He watched them darting to the left, then rove wildly, breath hissing and uneven. For the first time since he'd met her, no numbers filckered over her holo-screen. Because it was no longer there.

"wheRE..."

She fell off easily when he pushed. He stood up and looked down over her. His feet left dark prints on the stark floor as he circled around to get his things.

"I'm getting out of here, one way or the other."

"NO waY oUt For yOU. no sHips..."

He leaned over her. "There's one. Tak's ship. She wont be needing it any more, which makes everything easier I guess."

She managed to find the strength to roll over, but then she collapsed. Her claws scratched the floor.

"There's only two problems. First, I know Tak will have put in safeguards, so you'd need to bypass those. Second, you'd need a PAK to fly it."

Venn raised her head up from the ground. She focussed on him with difficulty and said something that Dib was sure was obscene in her own language. Her eyes found the tightly wrapped package and she reached for it with a plaintive sound.

Dib sat down in front of her and unwound the thick bandages from around her PAK. "You see, if I just wanted one of these, then Zim's would've done, and I could've gone through with the first part of Tak's plan. But his wouldn't have been able to get through the security on Tak's ship."

"YOU... yoU..."

"I knew you'd never let me go fix the power on my own. You'd never trust anyone else to keep an eye on me, so you'd come yourself."

Her breathing was getting shallow. Her head drooped a few times and snapped back up.

"You're the head of counter-intelligence on this ship. Your PAK is designed to crack codes and override and circumvent booby traps. Your PAK can control her ship, and with this," he pulled out his module, "I can control your PAK."

She hissed faintly.

"But without your PAK, you don't have any life support. Vitals, nervous system, your brain... they start failing. The database said removing it is supposed to activate a timer to warn you. Maybe you would've noticed it if I hadn't cracked you over the head. I got lucky, I guess." He smiled, because he had to.

No response.

"You had ten minutes from the moment I took it. I don't see any clocks around, but I think you time runs out... about twelve seconds ago."

There was no answer.

Dib got up and pressed the nearest panel. The doors to the docking bay opened, and he went inside.

Author's Notes: sorry this took so long. There was banking, snow, baby goats, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2 both came out, plus this chapter is horribly long.

I watch too much Doctor Who.

Anyway, have a present to make up for that lateness of the chapter.

http:// bioldrawings. deviantart. com/art/ Paranoia-and-Resolve-155849122


	11. Epilogue

Epilogue

Something drifted in the silence of space, and something else watched it.

When it came close enough, the watcher detached itself from its perch and propelled itself towards it.

*

"Incoming message!"

Red looked up, twirling a little model ship irritably.

"Whoever it is, tell them we're very busy."

"Yeah!" Purple moved a tiny cruiser forward three spaces in a blatantly illegal move, but it wasn't as if either of them ever played by the rules if they could possibly help it. "We're really busy!"

"With Tallest business."

"Yeah!"

The lackey chewed her lip nervously. "But it's marked with the your official seal... I _have_ to let it through..." She flinched in anticipation of a brief future in airlocks followed by a retirement in space.

Red frowned, slurping through a neon straw. "Our seal? We don't have any agents scheduled to report today, do we?"

"I don't think so..." Purple murmured.

Red sighed. Why was life so hard? "Well put them through anyway. It might be important." Purple scoffed, evidently nothing could be more important than playing board games and snacking. Red grinned back, pushing the game to one side and taking the opportunity to steal a few of his fellow Tallest's pieces.

The big screen flickered lit up.

Red chocked. He didn't see Purple's reaction, what with all the flailing and being hit on the back by an underling, but he could hear whimpering.

"Hi my Tallest! It's me! Sorry it's been so long since my last report, but I think you'll be very pleased with what I've been working on."

"Zim." It wasn't true. It couldn't be true.

He caught Purple's gaze. It was true.

"Zim... How did you... our seal?!"

The dark eyes narrowed to make room for a terrible grin. "Oh, an old friend was kind enough to lend it to me. Of course, I wont be needing it for much longer. But still, it was very... generous of them, don't you agree?"

Red found himself nodding and stopped. Something about Zim's voice was setting off old flight instincts. He shook himself.

"Why... why wont you be needing it...?"

" Don't _ask_ him!" Purple hissed, batting at him.

Zim cocked his head and smiled wider than should have been possible. "I thought it would be best if I came over to discuss my ideas with you personally."

"No!" both screamed. They were always best at working together in times of great trial. Purple came down first.

"You can't! You can't because, because, there are no ships, because we made sure. None at all!"

Red looked up, a glistening ray of hope piercing the murky sky.

Zim's grin was a storm. "It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're as amazing as me. And I had this seal. Getting transportation was as simple as can be."

Red grabbed the nearest minion. "Shut down the docking bay. Nobody gets in or out. But mostly in!" he whispered urgently.

The lackey who'd caught the call closed her eyes. This was not her best day, and it would probably be her last. "Um, sir. There was a request to dock a few seconds before the message. I, ah, I may have accepted it, um, I mean, I didn't know..."

The bottom dropped out of Red's squeedily-spooch.

"So I'll be up in a few short minutes, and very can have a pleasant chat." His eyes glazed over. "You're going to love my plans for the Empire."

The screen died.

Red became aware of Purple's hands crushing his upper arms.

"It... it's not going to be okay, is it?"

He swallowed. "We'll be fine. We're awesome. This is all going to be... okay."

The pressure on his arms released. He heard a sigh.

"I'm going for snacks."

Almighty Tallest Red sat down heavily. He looked at the game, still set up. A large battle cruiser, he couldn't remember if it was his or Purple's, was making a steady retreat from a group of dreadnoughts. Unfortunately, it was heading for a black hole, with no hope for a manoeuvre roll.

He tipped the board over. One of the staff leapt forward to clear them up, and he grabbed them by the scruff of their shirt.

"Hey, your the one who answered Zim's message, aren't you?" She nodded slowly. "What's your name?"

"Marako, s-sir."

"I'm going to be... very busy in the next... amount of time. Could you go and...?"

"Throw myself out an airlock, sir?"

He smiled. "That'd be just great."

She sighed resignedly, and left, dragging her feet.

And Red thought; _lucky._

*

It pulled the drifting thing through the doors and dropped it on the floor. It reached out a claw and flicked a switch.

The contents of the room ceased floating and fell. There was a long hiss as air flooded into the vacuum.

*

"_Incoming Message."_

Professor Membrane glanced up from his formula, then went back to his work.

The computer repeated itself a few more times, and he put aside his notes with an annoyed grunt. Things were so much more difficult ever since Simmons was burnt up in that explosion. His work was difficult enough without having to do things like answer calls!

Wiping the smoke from his goggles he sat down in front of the screen and pressed the 'receive' button.

"Hey dad."

"Son!" Membrane perked up a little. "How is your work on Foodcourtia progressing?"

Dib smiled weakly. He looked a little more worn out and scruffy then was usual. "I've been transferred somewhere else, but it's okay."

"Well, I'm sure you'll be a credit to our alien overseers, now that you're not playing paranormal investigator with you little friend."

Dib didn't flinch.

"I might be gone a while, dad. I have something important to do." He wouldn't meet his gaze.

The Professor frowned. "Now, son. I don't want you getting into any trouble."

"I wont, dad. I'll be fine. But, but just in case, I just wanted you and Gaz to know that..."

The silence stretched out, walls too long built and barred and enforced to be so easily thrown down, even now.

One of them cut the connection, and presently Membrane went back to his work.

*

"_Reactivating"_

*

Dib sat back in his chair. The engine hummed and throbbed rhythmically under his feet. It was warm.

He poised his fingers over the module. On the small screen a was a map. A red ring indicated the range his fuel tank would allow him to reach. Inhabited planets and moons flashed in green. There were many.

He reached out and selected one.

The ship moved quickly.

Soon it was only a star against an infinity of stars.

A moment later it wasn't even that.

*

"_Reactivating."_

Mimi sat with her hands clasped around her body. It had been a long time since her Master had left her here with her instructions. Longer still since she'd last felt this deep sense of apprehension.

When her Master got up she was going to be angry. She could tell by the way her skin was... blackened like that. She'd done her best with the first aid kit she'd found, but she wasn't a medical unit.

Master was going to be very angry.

"_Reactivating."_

The body jerked before lying back down again.

She was a loyal robot. She could wait. Her Master was resilient.

"_Reactivating."_

*

"Things are going to be different from now on, GIR. Better."

GIR looked up from his drawing of a happy cow and nodded. His master was looking out the window still, even though the ship had docked and the space outside wasn't dark and sparkly and far away any more and therefore was much less interesting.

Master liked looking out of windows a whole lot more since the Bad Time, and also he tapped his foot a lot. If he listened, GIR could hear the Crazy Taco commercial music in the rhythm. He missed Earth; but he had his snacks and his moon and his Master, so he was happy.

The cow winked at him, and them flew away.

A door opened and a ramp descended towards the floor of the bay. GIR could see all new people there with their delicious heads and cheerful singing air. A shame the cow had left before it could see it all.

There were two really tall people from the TV at the base of the ramp, and Master waved to them before sprinting down the ramp, making words. GIR recognised the words because Master had been saying them over and over since they got on the ship. They were big, special words that meant the the Empire was gonna be stronger and Master was gonna make it so.

Master must have forgot the end of the speech, because he didn't say it. GIR wondered if he should prompt him, because he knew how it went. It started; "and if any of them get in my way..."

Then a bear with mice in its ears spun past in a waltz, and he had to step in and be the partner, it looked so fun!

And besides, things were gonna be different from now on.

They were gonna be better.

**End**

Author's Note's: well, that was fun. I liked it anyway. I feel at a bit of a loose end now that it's over. I feel like a sequel would be nice, but not for a while. Everything's all chaotic and stuff right now. But I would love any feedback I could get, comments, critique, I take it all on board and it makes my writing less sucky.

Thanks to IYD24 for help and for chatting.

Thanks to my little brother for contributing a joke, and for looking over my first draft and telling me (quite rightly) that it was crap.

Eternity Embracer, for letting me beta your fics. It's made me way better at spotting problems in my own work. Also, you rock.

Everyone who reviewed. Chaos, Celestial Dragon in flight, EelvenGirl, InvaderChubbs, IYD24, passionateartist, LaughingAngelsGibberish, Tazer42, ngrey651 and knockplease. You're all so brilliant and awesome and if you're ever in Wales and need a cup of tea and a passable home-made brownie I'm your girl.


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